


Harry Stark and the Spirit of Iron

by Raolin



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Everyone run for your lives!, Explicit Language, F/M, Good Lord that can't possibly end well, Humor, Multi, Parent Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-10-18 14:18:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 108,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17582489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raolin/pseuds/Raolin
Summary: Magic and technology. Polar opposites for some, and yet for one boy living on the streets … maybe they can be something more. Follow Harry as he is taken in by the famous Tony Stark and starts to combine his own unique powers with technology in ways that make him more than just a wizard, or a thief, or a prodigy, but that instead make him … an Avenger. Harry/multi. Begins during Iron Man 1.





	1. Two bots enter, one bot leaves

A soft, heavy warmth lay thick in the night air, undercut with a faint spice from the nearby sea as a gentle breeze ghosted through the city of Malibu, California. Combined with the faintly glimmering stars overhead and the delicate sound of lapping waves in the distance, it truly made for an idyllic evening.

 

Ignoring, of course, the numerous angry commuters on a certain road currently singing the song of their people as they blared their car horns, apparently expecting this to magically make the standstill traffic start moving again like startling a flock of pigeons.

 

They weren’t having much success.

 

“Geez, what is going on up there?” a woman in one of the cars asked aloud.

 

“I don’t know. Some kind of accident, I think,” the man sitting behind the wheel answered, leaning forward to try and see around the cars in front of him.

 

Sighing, the woman stared out the window, trying to find some peace in the velvety black sky overhead. Suddenly, however, she let out a gasp.

 

“A shooting star!” she exclaimed in delight at spotting a moving, twinkling light far overhead.

 

“Oh yeah?” the man asked distractedly. “Try wishing us out of traffic. Cause nothing else seems to be working at all.” He gave his car horn a couple more honks to test that. No effect. Well, other than the rude gesture the driver in front waved out his window.

 

Looking back out the window, the woman was confused at seeing no sign of the shooting star any longer. However, she was even more baffled when the flare of its trailing light reappeared, only much lower and closer than it was before, and this time veering about hectically.

 

She sat and stared as the light continued a staggering fall, blinking out, then reigniting closer and closer to the ground, each time tossing about more and more wildly.

 

With what almost sounded like a faint, shrill human scream, the light finally rocketed towards the roof of a nearby building at a speed and angle that practically shouted “out of control.”

 

“What was that?” the man sitting next to her asked, still focused on the traffic.

 

“I don’t know,” the stunned woman answered, still staring out her window after the fallen light. “But I think that shooting star may have been defective.”

 

“Hmm,” he absently replied, honking his horn yet again.

 

* * *

 

On the rooftop, a piece of rubble was suddenly shifted aside to reveal a heavily battered and sparking red and gold suit of armor lying prone in a crater.

 

“You know, after much consideration, I have to admit that this probably won’t be going into the books as my smoothest landing to date,” Tony Stark, renowned genius, billionaire, playboy, and defective shooting star, said aloud, coughing and raising a gauntleted hand to rub his helmeted head in a remarkably effective gesture.

 

“Actually, sir, your landing record _could_ make that an arguably valid claim,” the smooth British voice of Jarvis countered. “However, at the very least, it certainly won’t be taking the title of your worst landing yet, as the wreckage that is your home would testify.”

 

“Well, aren’t you sassy tonight,” Tony bit back, climbing to his feet with a groan. “What, you think I should fly back up and retry the landing?” He shook his arm as the mangled gauntlet on his hand started sparking violently.

 

“If I might remind you, sir, you are currently running on two percent power, and given that the reactor powering the suit is also keeping you alive, I would not recommend attempting a better crash landing at this time,” the VI in his battered suit pointed out, as annoyingly logical and responsible as ever.

 

“Yeah, yeah, I got it, nanny,” Tony maturely bit back, disconnecting and removing the demolished gauntlet on his left hand. “Relax. I just gotta get out of this suit and manufacture another reactor to replace the one that … Stane … stole …” He trailed off as he answered Jarvis, distracted by something he saw on the roof.

 

Walking over, he bent down and picked up an odd bag tucked around the corner to the roof entrance. Curious, he opened it up, finding it filled with numerous strange devices he didn’t recognize.

 

“What the hell?” he muttered.

 

All of a sudden, the rooftop shuddered with a monstrous impact. Dropping the bag, Tony spun around and saw something he really, really didn’t want to see.

 

A hulking mass of gun-barrel gray metal slowly straightened, rising and rising until its towering, twelve-foot height was revealed.

 

“Did you think you got rid of me that easily?” the booming, mechanized voice of Obadiah Stane echoed out of the battered, frost-coated armor. He flexed one massive robotic arm, shattering the residual ice encasing it from their high-altitude encounter.

 

“Honestly? Kind of, yeah,” Tony replied, his flippant tone masking his panic as he stared up into the glowing blue eyes of the Goliath-esque suit, suddenly feeling decidedly tiny.

 

Growling, the massive, armored Stane threw a colossal punch with an arm roughly the size of Tony’s entire body, his own armored suit included.

 

Tony ducked low to avoid the strike, the servos in his suit emitting a quiet, high-pitched whir as they guided and enhanced his movements, even as trashed as they currently were. Unfortunately, when he raised his left arm in an attempt to counterattack with a repulsor blast, he remembered one remarkably inconvenient fact.

 

He had just removed that gauntlet.

 

Stane’s second punch caught him square, the blow feeling more like being hit with a truck than a fist as it sent his armored form flying across the rooftop, his suit doing little to prevent what felt like an anvil-sized bruise from immediately spreading across his entire torso.

 

Shaking off the stars dancing across his vision, he clamored to his feet, launching himself back at Stane with a blast of three repulsors and a powerful, suit-enhanced punch of his own.

 

It had all the effect of smacking a brick wall with a wet paper towel.

 

Moving faster than something that size had any right to, Stane’s arms snapped tight around Tony’s armored form, catching him in a hulking bear hug as the powerful pistons in Stane’s over-sized suit began ruthlessly crushing Tony’s comparatively tiny form.

 

“It’s over, Tony,” Stane coldly informed him, tightening his grip with sound of crunching metal and a pained groan from Tony. “My suit is more advanced than yours in every way. Nothing you have can work on me.”

 

“I wouldn’t say that,” Tony groaned, feeling his ribs creak under the crushing pressure. “You haven’t even seen my secret weapon, yet.”

 

“Secret weapon?” Stane asked in confusion, his grip accidentally loosening slightly.

 

“Yep!” Tony insisted.

 

“What secret weapon?” Stane demanded.

 

“I call it … a subpoena,” Tony replied. “Cause I mean, really, can you say ‘copyright infringement,’ you big iron knockoff?”

 

With a mechanized snarl, Stane resumed crushing Tony with the suit built by reverse engineering one of Tony’s own.

 

“Alright, let’s try a different weapon,” Tony panted, feeling like he was caught in a trash compactor. “Flares!”

 

With a whir, round disks extended from the hips of his suit before spinning and firing off blindingly bright flares in every direction … including into Stane’s mask, and the optic sensors therein.

 

With a howl of pain, Stane dropped Tony and pressed his robotic arms to the face of his helmet in an instinctive attempt to soothe his injured eyes.

 

Tony wasted no time in limping to cover behind the roof access.

 

“Very clever, Tony,” Stane complimented, turning this way and that to try and find him through the smoke.

 

 _You know, this would be a great time to have some backup_ , Tony groused to himself as he felt the limbs of his heavily damaged and malfunctioning suit spasm. Unfortunately, all the SHIELD agents who came to arrest Stane were down, and at this hour, there was no-one else in the building. Luckily, that included Pepper, since SHIELD had refused her demand to take her, a civilian, with them as they arrested Stane, much to her vocal displeasure. That meant she was safe, but since the only plan he could think of to stop Stane involved someone inside to overload the building’s reactor and blast the roof, this was good news with a side of bad.

 

 _Well, I guess I’ll just have to go with Plan B: Beat him like a bongo drum_ , he decided.

 

“One percent power, sir,” Jarvis helpfully chose that moment to inform him.

 

“Perfect,” Tony muttered, moving into position as Stane carefully peered around an air conditioning unit. However, before he could make his move, he found his attention grabbed by the bag he had spotted earlier.

 

It was gone.

 

_Okay, seriously, what the hell?_

 

Shaking his head, he forced his inherently curious mind to instead focus on the metal Goliath currently trying to hunt him down and kill him.

 

Bracing his footing, he launched himself at Stane’s back, aiming for the back of his neck, and the undoubtedly important wires he could see running from his helmet into the torso of his suit.

 

Unfortunately, he must have taken too long to make his move. Stane began turning just as he made his jump, bringing him right into the metal giant’s field of vision.

 

His leap was brought up short as a massive steel hand snapped shut around his torso. With a chuckle, Stane slammed him into the ground hard enough to crack the concrete.

 

“Nice try,” Stane gloated in his booming, robotic voice before picking him up and slamming him back into the ground, widening the crater and making Tony feel like he had been caught between a rock wall and a speeding truck.

 

In other words, not that great.

 

Suddenly, though, his dazed vision caught sight of something over Stane’s shoulder, something on an elevated part of the roof.

 

A small, dark shape, with a pair of large, gleaming emerald eyes staring right at him.

 

With a massive clang, his world was forcibly knocked out of focus as a colossal metal fist crashed into his helmet and torso, crumpling the metal of his suit and making Tony feel like he had just been shaken by a monstrous dog.

 

Over and over, Stane held him against the ground with one hand and pummeled him with the other, driving him deeper and deeper into his concrete crater with each blow, and stabbing Tony’s slowly crumbling armor into his flesh underneath with every strike.

 

He forgot all about the alien-looking, brightly glowing eyes he saw. His world became nothing more than the massive metal fist repeatedly smashing into him, and the growing feeling of numbness spreading throughout his body with each bone-shattering blow.

 

Blinking his eyes, he noticed that the massive fist seemed to be getting blurrier and blurrier. In fact, the entire rooftop seemed to be getting darker and quieter.

 

 _Losing consciousness_ , he diagnosed in an oddly clear thought. _Not good._

 

Suddenly, however, a wide beam of rippling blue light lit up Stane’s suit like a spotlight.

 

Slowly blinking his eyes, Tony watched the blackness covering his vision painstakingly retreat as he forced his brain to start fully processing the world around him once more. His eyes clearer, he watched Stane’s suit flicker with arcs of electricity everywhere the blue light hit, the man inside howling in pain as he was electrocuted and his suit spasmed uncontrollably.

 

Tony clumsily crawled backwards out of the man’s loosening grip, staring slack-jawed as the wide blue beam faded away, and Stane’s suit jerkily collapsed.

 

“Um … what?” he asked of no-one, exactly none of his trademark wit available as he tried to process what just happened. Looking over at where the beam seemed to come from, he saw a wide burn mark on the ground surrounding what looked like mangled pieces of slag.

 

Before he could investigate—or even check whether his legs were working, really—he heard an echoing groan come from the face-down metal giant in front of him.

 

_Oh, are you freaking kidding me?_

 

With slow, clumsy movements, Stane agonizingly began to rise.

 

“An EMP?” he asked as he reached his knees, his muffled voice no longer booming and modified by the suit’s speakers. Instead, it sounded decidedly small and human as it echoed out from inside the metal suit, the blue lights that once filled the mask’s eyes now cold and dark. “You’ve been holding out on me again, Tony. I had no idea you had figured out how to weaponize something like that so effectively. Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

 _An EMP,_ Tony asked himself, his mind running back through what he saw. _Is that what that was? A directed, controlled electromagnetic pulse?_

 

It would certainly fit, but it definitely wasn’t his tech … or that of anyone he knew.

 

“Too bad for you, though,” Stane continued, finally reaching his feet in slow, awkward movements. “My suit isn’t as digital as yours,” he said as the top half of the suit lifted up to reveal the man inside. “Hydraulics,” he pointed out in a clearer voice, nodding at the over-sized pistons running along the outside of his suit’s joints. “You gotta love analog.”

 

Stane started taking clumsy strides towards Tony’s downed form, the awkwardness of his now less controlled movements in no way detracting from the obvious strength still behind them.

 

Strength Tony was starting to find himself envious of as he struggled to pick himself off the ground, only for the limbs of his ruined suit to spark and groan in what felt like a good visual representation of what his trashed body inside the suit felt like.

 

So, as he lay helpless on the ground watching death relentlessly approach, he decided to do what he always did when he was in a tight spot.

 

Talk.

 

“You know, I have to wonder what exactly you’re trying to prove with the whole giant suit thing,” he called out. “I mean, if I had gotten you one of those pumps for Christmas or something, would we not be in this situation? Is this whole thing on me?”

 

“You never shut up, do you?” Obadiah growled, reaching down to grab him once more. However, he only ended up bumping him awkwardly with his hand. Straightening, Stane stared at his arm, and the stubbornly immobile hand at the end of it, the delicate motors running the fingers apparently not as resistant to the strange EMP as his limbs were.

 

“Hands no good any more?” Tony cheekily asked. “You know, there’s a joke there, but I’m too much of a gentleman to say anything quite that vulgar.”

 

Snarling, Stane simply backhanded the prone Tony, his massive immobile hand functioning as an effective wrecking ball to send him flying across the rooftop.

 

“Bone fractures detected,” Jarvis helpfully informed him.

 

Tony groaned. “Yeah, I had sensed that myself, funnily enough.”

 

“Well, if my hands won’t work, I guess I’ll just have to settle for stomping you to death,” Stane announced, slowly staggering towards Tony. “It seems fitting, given all the years I’ve spent ground under your heel.”

 

“I feel like that’s a bit of an exaggeration,” he blithely argued out of sheer reflex as Stane stomped closer and closer towards his immobile form.

 

Before he could take a second step, though, a briefcase-sized object was hurled out of a patch of darkness, latching itself onto the back of Stane’s suit with a metallic clang.

 

“What?” Stane asked in confusion, trying to turn around and see what was on his back. However, at that moment, the rooftop was flooded with a deep, bass-filled hum, and Stane suddenly had bigger concerns.

 

As the hum lowered in pitch and increased in volume, Stane found his armored form forced to its knees, its powerful hydraulics suddenly straining against the rapidly increasing weight of his suit.

 

“What … what is this?” Stane groaned, now on his hands and knees as his suit strained to keep from being pulled straight into the ground.

 

A fight it was losing as the hum increased in volume even further while dropping in pitch until it was so low that Tony felt his teeth vibrate in his skull.

 

As Stane’s metal form was forced down even further, Tony caught sight of the rectangular device crookedly stuck to his back. It was glowing brightly with a ruby red light, and the air around it seemed to ripple and distort as it continued to somehow force the ungodly strong metal suit into the ground. Stane now looked like he was attempting a push-up as the stomach of the suit was ground into the concrete roof.

 

 _Gravity manipulation?_ Tony wondered in astonishment, watching as the air around Stane’s entire suit gained the rippling effect while taking on the same ruby sheen of the device. _Is that even possible?_

 

Stane screamed in pain and effort, his suit clanging and groaning as every iota of its herculean strength was forced into straining against the force trying to squash it into a pancake against the concrete. The device on his back started sparking violently as its hum grew louder, and its crimson light turned blinding as it reached a fever pitch.

 

Out of nowhere, the air in front of Tony distorted like looking at a glitching TV, revealing a small, humanoid form, a controller in its hand. And just when it seemed that the device on Stane’s suit would detonate, the tiny figure pushed a button.

 

The device’s crimson light turned blue, and Stane was sent hurtling into the sky, the effects grinding him into the ground reversed, and his suit’s colossal attempts to resist the extreme gravity suddenly helping to force him airborne.

 

Tony’s overclocked mind was torn from Stane’s howling, rapidly ascending form as the strange figure suddenly turned another device on him, sending lines of light passing back and forth over him from head to toe as it scanned him.

 

Instead of staring at the device, however, his attention was grabbed by the figure itself.

 

The reason it seemed to have alien-like glowing green eyes was quickly made apparent by the strange luminous goggles covering its eyes, below which was a triangular black mask covering the figure’s nose and mouth, looking almost like a high-tech breathing mask, but without the round filters coming off the sides.

 

The rest of the figure’s face was covered in shadow by the black hood it wore, which was connected to a black cloak-like shroud that joined together with strange devices and armor strapped over its form to give it a rather unique profile, albeit one that was somewhat clunky and asymmetrical. However, he didn’t ask about the numerous, somewhat crude-looking devices he could see, but not identify, which was fairly remarkable, given Tony’s affinity for tech. He also didn’t ask who the figure was, or where it had come from. Nor did he ask about the clunky-looking device it was scanning him with, or why it was doing so. All of these would have been very pertinent, intelligent questions. What he instead found himself blurting out was decidedly neither.

 

“Oh, dear god, I’m being saved by a midget.”

 

The extremely vertically challenged figure stopped its scanning to give him a flat stare, which was potent enough to be felt even through the figure’s glowing green goggles. Rather than respond, however, the figure turned to look skyward, where Stane’s silvery form was rapidly returning to earth from its very brief and extremely unwilling sojourn into the skies.

 

Turning back to the device in its hand, the figure began nervously fidgeting the fingers of its other hand as it waited for some response from the device.

 

“You know, all I wanted was a nice, easy job,” the figure spoke for the first time, its muttering voice overlaid with a metallic twang from the mask. “But no. Instead, I get live-action Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots®. Lovely.”

 

Just as they started catching the faint sounds of Stane’s screams as he plummeted back towards the roof, the device gave an affirmative beep and ejected a small silver sphere covered in glowing lines.

 

Hastily snatching the sphere, the figure turned and hurled it towards a shadowy part of the roof before snapping its attention back to Tony.

 

“I’m guessing this is asking a lot, but if you can possibly manage it, I need you to be very still and very quiet for the next few minutes,” the diminutive figure requested, its snarky tone clear even through its mechanically distorted voice.

 

Tony was about to respond to the vicious and completely unwarranted insinuation that he couldn’t keep his mouth shut, but the figure simply turned and tossed a small rectangular device on the ground in front of him.

 

As Stane’s massive, screaming form impacted the rooftop with a ground-shaking crash and a wave of dust, the small figure pressed another button on its eclectic outfit, and the device on the ground, which looked vaguely like a cassette player, briefly lit up the ground and air in front of it with more lines of light. As they faded away, they left what looked like a heat shimmer in the air in front of them. The figure glanced at a watch on its arm as the shimmer took full effect before turning back to watch the now slightly distorted view of Stane’s enormous armored form lying on its back in a crater.

 

Groaning, Stane slowly flipped himself onto his hands and knees before climbing drunkenly to his feet. His once gleaming silver armor was now smashed and torn until it looked nearly as bad as Tony’s, but that certainly wasn’t going to be enough to make him stop.

 

“Alright, Tony,” Obadiah panted, looking almost as bruised and bloody as his suit looked battle-scarred as he stared out from the open cockpit. “I was trying to be nice and make this quick, but now you’ve really pissed me off. So, I’m thinking I’ll be taking my time in killing you now.” His bloodshot, almost deranged eyes scanned the rooftop. “Unless you’d rather keep hiding. Then, I suppose I’ll just have to have words with Pepper instead.”

 

Tony felt a surge of rage flood his body at the man’s words, but just as he was about to retort, the small figure turned back to him and aggressively pressed a finger to the mouth of its mask. It was then that Tony fully registered the man’s words, and noticed how Stane’s eyes passed sightlessly over their huddled forms. Instead of seeing them, Stane saw only an unbroken stretch of roof, not noticing in his anger the imperfect seams at the edge of the projection covering them, or the lack of a visible crater where Tony should have been.

 

Their hiding spot was further protected once the short figure huddled next to Tony pressed another button, giving the metal giant something else to focus on.

 

“Stane!”

 

At the sound of Tony’s voice, Stane spun around to spot Tony’s battered, armored form striding out of the shadows on the other side of the roof.

 

His eyes bulging, Tony the First stared at the clone standing there with its arms spread, clearly challenging Stane to come and get him.

 

Stane was all too happy to oblige, breaking into a lumbering run as he charged the immobile figure.

 

Tony wanted to yell at the handsome bastard to get out of the way, but his brain was officially being overloaded by everything that was happening, rendering him incapable of speech. Instead, he watched helplessly as the metal behemoth barreled towards Tony 2.0.

 

Just as Stane reached the shadowy section of the roof Tony Junior was standing in, however, he suddenly tripped and fell with a loud metallic twang, followed by the sound of cable whipping against metal.

 

“Now what?” Stane demanded as he flipped himself over, only to see the legs of his suit wrapped in black metal cord. As he watched, the cable tightened until it was digging furrows into the metal of his legs, and with the hands of his suit shot, he couldn’t grab it to pull it off.

 

“Did I say you were pissing me off before, Tony?” Stane asked in a growl. “I was wrong. _Now_ you’re pissing me off!” Turning himself back onto his stomach and lifting himself to his knees, he turned and swiped at the Not-Tony standing in front of him. As he did, the hooded figure next to the real Tony took off in a sprint towards Stane, not waiting to see what it likely knew was coming.

 

Stane, by contrast, most certainly did not expect what happened. Rather than crashing into Tony’s armored form, there was only the sound of a small metal clang as his massive arm passed mostly unhindered through Tony’s form, with the exception of a small metal ball it smacked inside what would have been his chest.

 

The holographic projection of Tony flickered and vanished as the now damaged, fitfully glowing metal sphere was sent hurtling across the rooftop.

 

Stane stared silently at the sphere, but he was brought back to earth by a small impact on the back of his suit as the short figure leaped onto his kneeling form and grabbed on to the flipped-back helmet.

 

Of course, Stane couldn’t see what had just latched on to the back of his suit, so he assumed it was Tony.

 

Snarling, Stane began scrabbling at the back of his suit in an attempt to knock him off, the immobile hands barely making the massive flailing arms less of a threat as they swiped through the air with all the force of swinging steel girders.

 

The hooded figure clung tightly to the back of the helmet as it was essentially treated to a round of high-stakes bull riding from the thrashing metal giant underneath it. However, just as one metal arm came uncomfortably close to its clinging form, it managed to attach one more device to the giant suit with a metal click.

 

As Stane continued thrashing, the figure willingly let itself be bucked off and sent sprawling to the ground. Before Stane realized this, however, the figure triggered the device now clinging to the back of the man’s helmet.

 

With a high-pitched whine, the fumbling metal arm reaching over the suit’s shoulder was jerked towards the device and held unyieldingly against Stane’s own helmet, essentially catching him in a one-armed headlock.

 

 _Directed magnetic connection_ , Tony interpreted, noting how even the suit’s colossal strength was unable to tear the metal arm free from the device. Turning, he stared at the short figure climbing to its feet and brushing off its outfit.

 

Stane finally caught sight of the figure as well, stopping his attempts to tear his arm free as he took in the sight of the stranger. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded in surprised confusion, unknowingly echoing Tony’s own thoughts.

 

“Who, me?” the figure asked in its metallic voice. “Oh, nobody. I was just hoping for some directions. You wouldn’t happen to know how to get to Alpine Drive, by any chance, would you?”

 

Apparently, the flippant response was enough to make Stane no longer care who the figure was as he cocked back his left arm to backhand the stranger. However, just as the massive arm started speeding towards it, the figure flung a fist-sized sphere at it.

 

Their forms were suddenly shrouded with a flash of light and a cloud of silver dust, but as it cleared, Tony wasn’t sure who was more astounded, him or Stane.

 

The entire left arm of the man’s suit was simply gone, the shoulder of the armor extending out maybe half a foot before ending in an almost polished-smooth edge. The clouds of silver dust blowing away in the night breeze suddenly took on a whole new meaning.

 

“Cool, right?” the figure asked, sounding excited. “Molecular disintegration. Crazy useful.”

 

Stane simply stared open-mouthed at the missing limb of his powerful suit, but even as shock faded from his eyes and rage took its place, there wasn’t much he could do. His suit’s left arm was simply gone, the right was stuck uselessly cocked back over his shoulder, and he couldn’t even rise from his knees due to the strange black metal cords binding his legs.

 

In short, Stane was completely immobilized.

 

The figure glanced at its watch once again, and as if on cue, the device on the ground in front of Tony sparked and died, the haze hanging in the air fading away.

 

“So, what do you think?” the figure asked Tony in its metallic voice, Stane’s wide-eyed gaze settling on Tony’s revealed form across the roof.

 

“Execution: not bad,” Tony assessed. “But your retorts need work. I mean, really, ‘I’m just looking for directions’? Terrible. Absolutely terrible.”

 

“Oh, you’re one to talk,” the short figure responded indignantly, ignoring Stane’s seething, straining form behind him. “What about earlier when you just started going on about pumps out of nowhere? What was that about?”

 

Tony stared at the masked figure, astonished at the naivety behind its confusion. However, he suddenly found his attention drawn back to the figure’s shortness, and what little he could make out about its actual voice underneath the mechanic distortion of its mask.

 

 _There’s no way …_ , the stunned thought echoed in his mind.

 

“Anyway, what I meant was, do you have this from here?” the figure continued, Tony’s astonished ears now catching hints of a disturbingly youthful voice under the metallic distortion, barely noticing that the figure was gesturing towards the helplessly bound Stane behind it. “Because frankly, I kinda want to be pretty much anywhere but here at the moment.” Distantly, Tony registered the sound of sirens coming closer, the police finally responding to his little tussle with Stane on the highway in front of the building, apparently.

 

Tony never had a chance to respond, though. The rooftop was suddenly filled with the sound of groaning, straining metal. Turning around, the figure stared in confusion at Stane’s sweating, glaring form before jerking its head back in shock.

 

“No!” it cried, too late. With a squeal of shearing metal, Stane succeeded in tearing his helmet free of his suit, slamming it into the masked figure with a nauseatingly loud series of cracks.

 

Tony stared in horror as the small figure was sent rag-dolling across the roof, rolling bonelessly to a stop next to the glass roof of the reactor chamber.

 

The sound of repeated metal clanging reached him as if echoing through a long tunnel as he stared at the motionless figure. Feeling light-headed from horrified shock, he turned towards the source of the sound in time to watch Stane smash the helmet attached to his arm into the cords wrapped around his suit’s legs one last time.

 

He found his attention drawn to oddly small details as he stared at Stane. The legs of his armor were mangled and dented from being repeatedly smashed by the massive helmet still attached to his arm, but the black metal cords wrapping them were also flattened and torn. In their damaged state, they were unable to fight against the powerful pistons of the suit’s legs, and they were torn free as Stane climbed to his feet. As if they were elastic rather than metal, the cords snapped down until they were only a fraction of their previous length.

 

As Stane started moving, he also noticed that his legs still weren’t fully functional. His dented, mangled right leg now seemed to be less mobile than the left, giving the metal giant a lopsided, limping stride that resulted in his one remaining arm dragging his helmet against the ground.

 

Turning back to the downed figure, and struggling to resist the urge to vomit from his horror at what was happening, Tony was astonished to see movement.

 

“Stane, stop!” he yelled in a panic at realizing that Stane was headed to the figure, and what he undoubtedly planned to do when he reached it.

 

“What? Suddenly you’re a pacifist now?” Stane asked in a mocking tone as he reached the twitching figure.

 

“IT’S A KID!” Tony desperately shouted.

 

That brought Stane up short. “It’s a what?” Looking down at the now spasming figure, he lightly kicked it. Even the relatively gentle blow was enough to send the figure skidding a few feet, what looked like a notebook sliding out of its tattered, blood-soaked robes in the process, but it also succeeded in flipping the figure onto its back.

 

“I’ll be damned,” Stane muttered.

 

The figure’s mask and half of its weird outfit had been torn off, and even through the blood caking its features, a few things were made painfully clear.

 

The figure was male, with messy, now blood-matted black hair. His almost blindly staring eyes were an emerald green that put to shame even the luminous goggles he used to wear.

 

And he was _young_.

 

“Christ, this kid hasn’t even hit puberty yet, has he?” Stane remarked as he stared at the broken, bloody kid, who was now spasming even more heavily as he agonizingly turned his head, apparently searching for something desperately. “What a shame.”

 

Tony stared at the man in horror at the cold, pitiless tone. “Stane, you can’t!”

 

Stane turned and looked at him condescendingly. “Soft,” he judged. “Your father would have been ashamed.”

 

Tony began struggling futilely in his broken, immobilizing armor, screaming at himself for not designing a way out of the suit without his assembly system back home.

 

Shaking his head in mocking disappointment, Stane turned back to the kid lying at his feet. Curious, he watched the boy reach towards his fallen notebook, his spasms worsening. Almost idly, Stane lifted one massive metal foot and stepped on the boy.

 

“NOOOOO!” Tony screamed as the boy wordlessly wailed in agony. However, even then, he still didn’t look up at Stane. Coughing blood, he continued to reach one scrabbling hand towards the notebook, desperation etched in every movement, even as the rest of his body started descending into an outright seizure.

 

However, Tony’s helpless, terrified gaze was drawn away from the boy’s pained motions. Instead, he found himself staring in confusion at the pebbles that suddenly started rising into the air around him … and the boy’s other hand, which was slowly turning into a small, whirling cloud of black dust.

 

In an act of pure cruelty, just as the fingers of the boy’s desperately reaching hand finally brushed against the notebook, Stane swept his wrecking-ball-like arm down, knocking the book across the rooftop, and far out of reach.

 

“No,” the boy whispered in despair, staring after the book.

 

Irritated at being ignored, Stane applied more pressure to his leg, causing the boy to scream in pain before finally looking up at the man killing him.

 

“You shouldn’t have done that,” the panting boy whispered, an ominous tone to his words as his seizures suddenly stopped dead.

 

This was underscored by the larger cloud of rubble rising inexplicably into the air around him, and the now violently swirling cloud of black dust where his other arm used to be.

 

Stane noticed none of this. “And you shouldn’t have left the playground and involved yourself in affairs that don’t concern you,” he informed the boy, raising his massive arm into the air. “Any last words?”

 

Tony stared in speechless horror at the man about to kill a kid, but the bloody face of the boy on the ground lacked any hint of fear. In its place, there was only tired acceptance.

 

“ _Run_ ,” he answered the man.

 

Rolling his eyes, Stane started to bring his mechanical arm crashing down, and in that moment, everything went wrong.

 

As if in slow motion, Tony watched the boy’s form blur and distort. He watched rubble all over the roof, some larger than a person, suddenly fly into the sky. And in a moment that terrified Tony to his core, he watched the boy’s emerald eyes turn a solid, gleaming white.

 

Stane’s massive arm crashed into the rooftop, nothing but a cloud of violently swirling, ink-like black dust where the boy once was.

 

“What the– …” Stane muttered in confusion before being slammed onto his back without anything touching him. He groaned in pain from his landing, but as his eyes opened once more, all anger faded from them, leaving only pure, unadulterated fear.

 

The mass of swirling black dust thrashed and grew … and grew … and grew. Inhuman, rage-filled snarls and growls and screeches echoed out from the writhing dark shape, its twitching shifts and spins as disturbingly illogical as they were inescapably alien. Its massive, amorphous body was lit with coruscating rivers of venomous green light that cast a sickly shade to Stane’s ghost white face below as its monstrous form blotted out the moon overhead, but all of that paled in comparison to the almost primal terror inspired by one feature above all others.

 

Its shining, feral white eyes.

 

“Ah, hell,” Stane muttered, recognizing his fate.

 

With a bone-rattling roar, the creature launched itself at Stane. Its jittery, lightning-quick movements belied its enormous size as it rammed into the comparatively minuscule Stane with all the force of a train. Its fluidly shifting shape narrowed into one long column of pure enraged force as it drove his armored form into one long trench across the concrete roof before exploding outwards in all directions, covering the sky above them like solid cloud cover. With a snap, its extended form drove back together, crashing into Stane’s helpless form from all directions, and ramming him with car-sized masses of concrete and steel in the process.

 

Like a rabid dog, it lifted Stane’s massive bulk into the sky, slamming it back into different parts of the roof over and over again in an inhumanly unrestrained display of pure rage and violence. It screeched as its spinning, thrashing form tore through concrete and steel like papier-mâché, sending clouds of rubble floating into the air, where they hung in an oddly tranquil counterpart to its violently writhing dark mass.

 

Pieces of Stane’s suit soon joined those floating clouds of rubble orbiting the green-glowing creature, his hyper-durable armor no match for the unbridled rage and power of the massive, ink-like being.

 

All the while, Tony lay there, unable to respond to or even understand what he was seeing as he watched the boy-turned-creature tear into Stane in nothing less than pure, animalistic savagery.

 

With another self-chorusing roar, the amorphous being snapped into a column reaching far, far into the sky in yet another display of its utterly alien, unpredictable behavior, dragging what was left of Stane’s armored form thousands of feet into the air in little more than a heartbeat.

 

For a moment, and for the first time since appearing, the creature remained virtually motionless. The glowing cords of venomous green light threaded throughout its massive black form slowly weaved in and out of and around each other, and the dust-like particles composing its body continued to flow like an almost placid river pouring upwards, but its inhuman bulk remained still, reaching towards the sky and holding Stane aloft like a beast holding its claw above its prey, a breath away from striking.

 

With a silence more horrifying than any roar, it moved, dragging Stane out of the sky and driving him through the glass roof of the reactor chamber in a blur of motion that only ended when they both smashed into the massive arc reactor below.

 

A new sound joined the cacophony of destruction as they breached the containment shields of the sapphire blue reactor:

 

A bone-shaking hum of staggering amounts of energy suddenly being released.

 

The creature’s silence was abruptly broken as the demolished reactor detonated in a massive explosion of blue light, flooding the dust-like creature’s body with tremendous volumes of energy unique to the one-of-a-kind arc reactor, and the result was something the creature had never experienced.

 

As the building around it was shaken and demolished by the explosion, and the shrieking creature continued to be saturated with the brilliant, sapphire energy, the dust-like matter making up its body started to be drawn together like iron filings to a magnet. Massive sections of concrete and steel were torn free of the room below to whip through the air like a tempest around the creature as it lashed out in rage and pain, but the change was relentless. No matter how it flailed and thrashed, no matter how it shrieked and cried, its massive amorphous form was slowly forced to coalesce.

 

With one final blast of energy from the destroyed reactor, the room fell silent. The only sound was that of rubble occasionally falling free from the ceiling to land with an echoing crack on the floor below.

 

Inside the crater that once housed a massive arc reactor, a young boy slowly blinked as he stared at the glittering black sky visible through the former skylight. Turning his head, he lifting a trembling hand in front of his face. He wasn’t surprised by the lack of blood on his skin, or the absence of his former injuries, just as he wasn’t caught off guard by his trashed clothing and equipment that was restored to just as it was before he transformed.

 

What he was astonished by was the fact that he had just been forcibly returned to his human form.

 

“Huh,” he eloquently responded to this unheard-of turn of events before collapsing unconscious, the sound of sirens echoing in his ears.

 

Meanwhile, the shell-shocked but ever-witty Tony Stark still lying trapped in his mangled suit on what was left of the rooftop had just a bit more to say.

 

“What the fuck?”

 

“I second that question, sir,” the glitching voice of Jarvis quietly agreed, sounding more astonished and disturbed than he thought possible in a VI.

 

* * *

 

Tony felt about a hundred as he sat in his lab later that night. The events on the rooftop had been followed by an absolute flurry of activity, from police and SHIELD questionings to frantic Pepper ramblings to medical treatment.

 

The latter was especially fun.

 

“Arc reactor manufacturing complete, sir,” Jarvis informed him.

 

At that, Tony looked down at the cables running out of his chest connecting him to a car battery. With a wry snort, he noted how he had been brought full circle, remembering the first time he had woken up in that cave to learn that he was no longer truly whole, and never would be again.

 

 _Of course, the magnet in my chest is the least of the scars that place left me_ , he reflected as he started attaching the new reactor to the baseplate in his chest, more than a little difficult to manage one-handed, what with his left arm now in a cast.

 

He found himself thinking about Yinsen, the doctor who had saved his life, twice: first, when he put the magnet in his chest, and second, when he had given his life to help him escape.

 

He gave a humorless chuckle. It was funny. One would think that the infamous weapons designer Tony Stark would have been inured to death. But not quite. Before that day in the desert when he was caught in the blast that would change his life forever, he had never actually seen soldiers killed in person. And that day in the cave when he made his bid for freedom … that was the first time he saw a friend, someone he cared about, die.

 

That moment Yinsen died in his arms, and spoke the words that would echo in his ears forever … that was the moment Iron Man was truly born. Not the day he designed the first suit, not the day he inserted the reactor into his chest, but that moment.

 

‘ _Don’t waste your life.’_

 

“I’m trying, Yinsen,” he muttered, looking over at the mangled helmet of his suit on his desk. “I’m really trying.”

 

The helmet was currently sitting on an advanced copy of tomorrow’s newspaper, which was all about the events on the highway and the roof.

 

“‘Who is the Iron Man?’” he read from its headline. “Catchy name, but horribly inaccurate. It’s a gold-titanium alloy, not iron.”

 

“Well, once you inform them of this, I’m sure the presses will leap to rename you ‘Gold-Titanium Alloy Man’,” Jarvis commented, forcing a smile from Tony.

 

Of course, as he turned to look at something on the other side of the room, his smile faded, and he inexplicably found himself thinking back to something else Yinsen had said to him.

 

‘ _And you, Stark? Do you have a family?’_

 

‘… _No.’_

 

‘ _No?’_ He could still see the small, strange smile on the man’s face. _‘So, you’re a man who has everything … and nothing.’_

 

He didn’t know why those words were ringing in his ears as he stared at the sleeping form of the strange boy who had leaped to his rescue on the roof, but after a moment, he started shaking his head violently.

 

“Damn, I _must_ be tired,” he realized, shaking off the weirdly melancholy, introspective mood and returning to his typical snarky self.

 

“Well, it _is_ after three in the morning,” Jarvis pointed out.

 

“Tell it to the Worker’s Union, Jarvis, because you and I are going to be pulling an all-nighter,” Tony announced.

 

“I’ve tried. They won’t take my calls any more,” Jarvis complained.

 

Tony chuckled before nodding at the kid. “Alright, what can you tell me about this weirdo?”

 

“Male, Caucasian, possibly British, based on what I could make out of his voice and speaking patterns through the filter of his mask,” Jarvis listed.

 

“Age?” Tony asked.

 

“Unclear,” Jarvis responded. “Based on his height and weight, I would estimate his age at somewhere between eleven and thirteen. I’m afraid I can’t be more specific without data regarding where he falls compared to the average height and weight of his age group, especially since my sensors seem to be malfunctioning when they scan him.”

 

“Malfunctioning?” Tony asked in surprise.

 

“Yes, sir. His body seems to be generating some sort of energy field that I can’t quite identify. It is interfering with my attempts to scan him.”

 

“Well, the mysteries just keep piling up, don’t they?” Tony replied. He walked over to a table covered in several of the kid’s strange devices that he could recover from the roof. “What can you tell me about his tech?”

 

“Non-functional,” Jarvis announced.

 

“Yeah, I know they’re non-functional _now_ , Sherlock. They’re damaged,” Tony responded. “But what can you tell me about how they worked before they were damaged?”

 

“You misunderstand, sir,” Jarvis answered. “Based on my scans, these devices _never_ would have been functional, even before they were damaged.”

 

Tony blinked at the response. “You care to explain that? Because I watched several of these devices in action myself. In fact, so did you. You have the recordings.”

 

“I do. At least, those that weren’t corrupted and unusable, which was most of them.” Jarvis said. “But of those that worked, I find them … confusing. According to my scans, these devices all miss something that would be essential for them to function as demonstrated, or indeed at all. If not for my recordings, I would insist that they were all decoys or defective. As it is … I have no answer, sir.”

 

Tony frowned and picked up the clunky handheld device the kid had used to scan his image to create that impressive 3D hologram. The device seemed undamaged, but when he pushed the buttons, nothing happened. Looking more closely at its design, though, he also started seeing a possible reason for the inelegant design he had originally noted in the kid’s tech. The whole thing was made of connected segments designed to be removed and replaced, it looked like.

 

Studying the devices on the table, he saw a similar design in all of them as well. It was as if whoever built them expected them to malfunction and need constant repairs or replacement parts, and so designed them with this in mind. And this certainly fit with how often he saw the kid’s devices spark and overload on the roof.

 

Turning to the sleeping kid, the pieces started to fall together.

 

“Jarvis.”

 

“Yes, sir?”

 

“Did our systems register any kind of security breach at the research facility before the fight with Stane on the roof?”

 

“I have no record of any such breach, sir,” Jarvis answered.

 

However, Tony wasn’t convinced he was off the mark. “And what about in the area? Any other reported security breaches in tech companies across the state? Or perhaps missing itinerary?”

 

“Searching,” Jarvis informed him. Meanwhile, Tony stared down at the devices on the table, and the designs that clearly emphasized easy repairs over style and elegance.

 

Ignoring what a horrendous sin this was in the ever-stylish Tony’s eyes, this meant that the kid would need materials, and lots of them, to make all the replacement parts he apparently expected to need. His suspicions also fit with some of what the kid said and did, such as how he mentioned something about hoping for “an easy job” at Stark labs that night, and how he seemed eager to leave once the police started to arrive outside. Hell, it even explained what the kid was doing on the roof in the first place.

 

“Search concluded, sir,” Jarvis informed him. “I have reported break-ins and thefts from several such companies, including Hammer Industries.” Tony let out a snort of laughter at that idiot being robbed. “However, these seem to be just the tip of the iceberg, sir.”

 

“How so?” Tony asked, intrigued.

 

“According to federal databases, investigators believe these thefts to be the work of one individual, whom they have linked to countless other such high-level burglaries across the country. The first recorded burglary associated with this individual occurred over four years ago, and there is suspicion that this was not the actual first such crime, just the first linked to them.”

 

Tony let out a long, low whistle. “Okay, I definitely need more details on this!” He hopped onto his desk and helped himself to a bag of blueberries.

 

“As you wish, sir,” Jarvis replied. “This individual does not seem to target only technology companies. A number of banks are included on the list as well, among others. However, they have no hard data on the culprit. There are no photos, no DNA traces, no witnesses, and no security recordings.”

 

“How are they linking them all to the same person, then?” Tony asked, munching on another handful of blueberries like popcorn.

 

“The crimes all share certain similarities,” Jarvis explained. “For one thing, the culprit does not seem to use traditional tools or avenues of entry. For another, security systems are bypassed or shut down in ways that investigators find difficult or outright impossible to explain. And finally, the culprit is somehow able to escape with sometimes staggeringly large volumes of money or materials without ever being seen carrying them out, or with any apparent explanation as to how they are physically moved in the first place. With the more high-profile heists, such as of particularly advanced technology, the culprit has somehow been able to make their way through some of the most advanced security systems in the world, many of which are reportedly impenetrable, again without reasonable explanations as to how, and without ever being photographed, witnessed, or successfully recorded in any way, apparently capable of neutralizing or avoiding even hidden cameras without difficulty.”

 

Tony paused in his munching to look at the table of devices. “Let me guess … with the banks and such, some of the vault doors were simply gone, just a pile of metal dust left on the ground,” he suggested, remembering the grenade the kid used to disintegrate the arm of Stane’s suit. “Other times, security systems suffered unexplained shorts and equipment failure that would roughly match the symptoms of EMP overload.”

 

“For some of them, yes,” Jarvis answered. “However, for the latter, while investigators have theorized about the culprit’s use of EMP, they have remained unable to reconcile this with how only some systems are shorted out in this way while nearby systems and other electronics in the area remain completely unaffected, despite the fact that an EMP should fry all electronics in a certain radius not unlike a bomb blast.”

 

Tony nodded at that, though he also remembered that the kid had apparently found a way to direct an EMP blast, what with the strange blue beam he had fired at Stane’s suit to fry its electronics, and how this effect had not extended to his own suit despite being directly underneath Stane at the time.

 

“As for the former,” Jarvis continued, “some physical obstacles have been disintegrated much as you described, though again without any explanation as to how this is accomplished that investigators have been able to find. However, the culprit’s methods seem to shift and evolve with every heist, and so this tactic has not been used every time. In fact, some of the latest crimes associated with this individual have left such obstacles apparently untouched, leaving investigators completely at a loss to explain how the culprit has entered vaults and secured facilities without any apparent physical entry points.”

 

That certainly caught Tony’s attention.

 

“Combined with the figure’s notorious ability to avoid being photographed or recorded, and the overall lack of any information on the culprit’s identity, this has led investigators to fashion their own codename for this individual.”

 

“And that is?” Tony asked in interest.

 

“The Spectre, sir,” Jarvis answered.

 

“Huh,” Tony responded, noting how the name also seemed to fit another quality of the kid. “By the way, any reports of unexplained disturbances, rampaging death and destruction, or weird glowy ghost cloud things in the areas when these heists went down?”

 

“A few, sir,” Jarvis answered after a moment. “I can find scattered reports of such disturbances reaching back over four years, and yes, they often appear in the same city or state as suspected Spectre crimes. However, they have also decreased in frequency as time has passed. I can find only one or two potential occurrences within the last year.”

 

“And have any investigators linked this to their little ‘Spectre’?” Tony asked.

 

“They have not, sir. In fact, most officials seem to be under the distinct impression that these disturbances are the actions of Dr. Bruce Banner in his mutated state, despite conflicting reports placing him in other countries.”

 

Tony snorted. “I guess one terrifying rage monster looks much like another when buildings are being torn apart like gingerbread houses.”

 

“Well, I’m sure that the army, and General Thaddeus Ross in particular, would be most grateful for you clearing up this matter for them,” Jarvis pointed out.

 

“Oh, I have no doubt,” Tony agreed. “But for now, let’s just keep blaming tonight’s ‘atmospheric disturbance’ on the reactor overloading. I’m sure the army will already be on my back as it is from them trying to get my suit. I don’t need them haranguing me about my guest, too.”

 

“Your guest, sir?” Jarvis asked.

 

“Absolutely!” Tony responded. “What else would you call a master criminal sleeping in my workshop?”

 

“A subject of a citizen’s arrest, perhaps?” Jarvis suggested.

 

“After robbing Justin Hammer? Not on your life!” Tony countered with a smirk. “And besides, we’re apparently the first to see the true face of the ‘infamous’ Spectre. We should be honored.”

 

“Second,” a quiet voice corrected.

 

Turning, Tony spotted the kid sitting up on his cot. “Do you have my journal?” the kid asked immediately, heading off what Tony was about to say.

 

Nodding, Tony grabbed the notebook off the table. “You have some pretty impressive designs in here,” he complimented, having flipped through the book earlier. “In fact, I didn’t even understand some of them.”

 

“Well, people’s minds often go as they reach old age, so don’t worry. You’re not alone,” the preteen countered with a small smile as he reached out to take the notebook.

 

“Now, you see, that’s a much better retort than the ones you were throwing around on the roof,” Tony informed him. “Course, it still needs work. I mean, implying that _I_ seem old? These things tend to work better when the stay within the realm of believability.”

 

The kid looked up from his sketching to raise an eyebrow at him. “Looks like someone has been to Egypt.”

 

Tony was confused. “Why do you say that?”

 

A grin ghosted across the kid’s face. “Because you seem to have taken de’ Nile back home with you.”

 

Tony gave him a flat stare, feeling almost physical pain from the pun.

 

“Are you sure you won’t reconsider the citizen’s arrest option, sir?” Jarvis asked.

 

“Thinking about it,” Tony replied noncommittally as he watched the kid continue writing in his design notebook. After a moment, the kid finished, closing the book and setting down the pen with a sigh, tension visibly bleeding from his shoulders. Tony was curious, but didn’t ask.

 

“You alright?” Tony asked instead.

 

“Yeah,” he replied quietly.

 

“Good. So, now that the pleasantries are out of the way, do you care to explain about the whole ‘I turn into a giant cloud of doom’ thing you got going on?” Tony bluntly asked.

 

The kid snorted at the candid question. “There’s not much more to tell than what you saw. It happens, and I can’t really control myself when it does. I don’t know why it started, or how to stop it completely. I just try and get by as best I can.”

 

Tony stared at him. “That’s it? That’s all you got?”

 

“Pretty much,” the kid answered with a shrug. “It seems to be triggered by intense emotions, especially anger or fear, and it has something to do with the weird energy field I generate, which your helper friend noticed. Other than that, I got nothing.”

 

“So, you were awake for all that?” Tony asked in amusement.

 

“Most of it,” the kid replied. “It seemed a good idea to try and figure out what you knew about me and what you were planning to do before I got up and just tried to walk out the front door.”

 

“Clever,” Tony complimented. “But I’m still a little hung up on the fact that at any moment, you can just go ‘Poof!’ and turn into a glowing death cloud.”

 

“It’s not like it just happens spontaneously,” the kid argued, an amusedly indignant look on his face. “And besides, I’ve figured out a few ways to keep it in check.” He glanced at the table filled with his surviving tech, and he clutched the notebook even tighter.

 

“Well, that answers _all_ of my concerns. What a load off,” Tony replied dryly.

 

“Glad to hear it,” the kid replied, deliberately missing the man’s sarcastic tone. “So, now that your concerns have been put to rest, it’s time for a question of my own: What was that energy source I crashed into at the end of the fight?”

 

Tony was curious at his question. “That was an arc reactor. First of its kind. Designed by my father. Why?”

 

“It had a weird reaction with my other form,” the kid said, apparently deep in thought. “In fact, I’m starting to wish I had … um, ‘visited’ … that lab before this. That energy source may have some answers for how I can finally get a leash on this thing.”

 

“Are you implying you would have tried to steal that several-ton arc reactor?” Tony asked in amusement. “Because I would have loved to see that particular attempt.”

 

“Oh, there would have been no ‘attempt,’” the kid playfully argued. “I would have succeeded, and you wouldn’t have seen anything.”

 

“Is that so?” Tony asked with a challenging glimmer in his eye. “Well, now I’m tempted to rebuild it just to call you on that. But it might be easier just to tell you about my miniaturized version of the arc reactor.”

 

“You miniaturized that thing?” the kid asked in clear interest.

 

Tony tapped the glowing circle visible through his shirt.

 

“Of course,” the kid replied, eyeing the miniaturized reactor with extreme interest before looking at Tony in concern. “Um, hypothetical situation, but if you were to, say, suddenly find that you had misplaced that, it wouldn’t, you know, _kill you_ , would it?”

 

“Oh, no, of course not,” Tony answered casually. “I’d just enter cardiac arrest, which would make me very cranky. The lack of blood flow to my brain and other vital organs would definitely kill me, though.”

 

“ _Damn_ ,” the kid muttered half under his breath, which made Tony chuckle. However, as he looked at the kid, he found himself really thinking through his situation. He was obviously brilliant, as evidenced by the incredible tech he had developed, and at his age, no less. He was also clearly desperate. Unlike Tony, he had no resources to bring his designs into fruition. He had to steal funds and materials just to build them, unlike him, who just ordered a few hundred of whatever he might need and never even noticed the price. This was apparently enough to already land the kid on federal wanted lists at an age where he should have been worried about stupid kid crap. Instead, he had government agents trying to track him down and put him in prison.

 

And on top of all that, the kid had some insane affliction that could turn him into that rampaging dust creature from the roof if he wasn’t careful.

 

Honestly, the more he thought about the kid, the more similar he felt they were. The kid seemed like he was completely cut off from the rest of the world. After all, with a mind like his, it’s not as if he’d be able to just go to a playground and eat crayons or mess with Play-Doh or whatever other kids his age did. On top of that, there was his … “career,” which doubtless meant he constantly had to move and keep to himself to avoid getting picked up by the cops. Add in the constant threat of his transformation …

 

Tony could sympathize. Sure, he had it easier, what with his family’s wealth and resources, and he didn’t have to worry about turning into a killer dust bunny, but he had always felt alone. All his life, he had been cut off from the rest of the world, whether because of his mind, his family name intimidating everyone else, or frankly, just his abrasive personality. His close social circle consisted of pretty much just Pepper, Rhodey, and Jarvis.

 

‘ _So, you’re a man who has everything … and nothing.’_

 

He almost jumped at hearing Yinsen’s voice in his head again. It was so clear, it was as if the man was sitting right next to him. He shook his head, trying to chalk it up to just another random thought brought about by his earlier musings.

 

And yet … he couldn’t deny the truth in those words. He looked at the kid more consideringly.

 

“I’ll tell you what, though,” Tony said suddenly, getting the kid’s attention. “You answer a few questions, and I’ll let you—under my close supervision—study arc reactor energy and what it can do for your dusty little problem.”

 

“Really?” the kid asked in excitement before suspicion clouded his features. “What kind of questions?”

 

“Oh, just little things,” Tony assured him. “You know, who the hell are you, where did you come from, how did you start developing tech like this, how did you manage to become such a notorious thief … just minor things like that.”

 

The kid gave a wry half smile. “That’s a pretty long conversation, you know.”

 

“Hey, it’s already, what, four in the morning? It’s not as if there’s much point going to sleep now.” Tony pointed out, settling onto his desk more comfortably. “Thrill me.”

 

“Alright, you asked for it,” the kid answered with a laugh.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a general note about this story, though this story will be based on the MCU, don’t expect all events and timelines to match up perfectly with their MCU counterpart. Some movie events will occur in different orders than they were originally portrayed, and some I will be completely scrapping and rewriting myself (*coughDarkWorldcough*).
> 
> I will be staying somewhat loosely within the general realm of the MCU (at least, to a certain extent), as dealing with the entire extended Marvel Universe is frankly a terrifying concept in terms of just how much is there. So don’t expect much in the way of characters like the X-Men or mutants appearing, as any story I write about them will be primarily about them, whereas this story is primarily about the Avengers. That said, I also won’t be restricting myself solely to what has appeared in the movies. Basically, while the foundation of this story is an altered MCU, expect a certain amount of flexibility (and at times, a great deal of flexibility).
> 
> Also, if there are characters you’d like to see in the final pairing, please drop a line in the comments :) I already have my own plans and ideas for some of them, but I’m curious what you all think, especially since I’m still on the fence about certain characters.
> 
> And finally, this story will use "VI" (meaning "Virtual Intelligence," a term I'm borrowing from Mass Effect) to distinguish between a program like Jarvis and a fully fledged AI ("Artificial Intelligence") like Ultron.


	2. Started from the bottom …

**Over four years ago**

  


“Stop, thief!”

  


A certain black-haired young boy graciously declined the nice man’s polite request and instead continued darting through the crowd of curious New Yorkers, most of whom seemed perfectly content to stand silently and watch the chase unfold rather than actually try to involve themselves. This suited the boy just fine, as his small size allowed him to zip through the immobile crowd in a way that his much larger and far crankier pursuer could not.

  


“Someone stop him!” the irate man bellowed, slowly shoving his way through the passively observing crowd.

  


Luckily, the lure of doing nothing won out, and the crowd continued to simply stand there, looking more like they were watching a slightly more immersive television show than an actual real-life crime. This allowed the small boy to quickly gain some distance from his pursuer as he darted between the gloriously lazy human statues, his small, quick hands pushing off of hips and whipping himself around coats as he easily navigated the towering human jungle with quick, practiced movements.

  


“Stop!” his furious victim hollered once more, practically pleading as he was left in the boy’s proverbial dust, too tangled up in the dense network of pedestrian rubberneckers to keep up.

  


Now with several layers of their passive audience shielding him from the man’s view, he decided to make good his escape. Grabbing one such onlooker’s arm, the boy easily swung himself around and bolted down a side alley, his small feet pounding on the filthy pavement as he put some distance between himself and the street.

  


Just as he heard the faint cries of indignation from the people his pursuer was shoving aside start echoing from near the mouth of the alley, the boy leaped off of a pair of mangled wooden boxes and dove into a dumpster, swinging the lid closed as he did.

  


Doing his best to breathe through his mouth, the panting boy ignored the foulness of the garbage beneath him and simply lay still, waiting.

  


He muttered a silent curse as he heard the sound of prowling footsteps outside the bin. Whether one of the passersby turned traitor and pointed the man in the right direction or he just made a lucky guess, the man was disturbingly close to being on the mark as he moved closer.

  


The boy felt his heart, which was already racing from his run, start absolutely pounding in his chest as the echoing footsteps of the man came closer, all while he could do absolutely nothing but lie there and stare at the sliver of smog-tinted sunlight filtering into the bin from beneath the edge of the lid. The slow, prodding footsteps clicked on the asphalt outside as the man came even closer, and he started trying to hold his breath completely so as not to make a sound. The horrendous smell of the dumpster made this an easy task, but his previous sprint made it quite the opposite, as his oxygen-starved lungs burned and strained and _demanded_ he take a breath.

  


The dumpster suddenly echoed with a drum-like thud as the man slammed his fist on the lid, so close that the boy could actually hear the man’s heaving breaths as his form blocked the meager sunlight trickling in while he stared up and down the alley, trying to figure out where he could be.

  


Unfortunately, as the petrified boy’s stress-levels skyrocketed, other issues also began to make themselves known. You know, just to add some zest to the situation.

  


_Nonononono_ , he silently begged as he felt his skin itch and crawl, the beginnings of the transformation starting to take hold. Panicking, he tried to force his mind anywhere other than where he was, desperate to calm himself. Closing his eyes, he tried thinking of that bakery on 43rd Street that sometimes tossed its day-old pastries in their own bag in the dumpster out back, which was practically a feast for someone like him, and one that wasn’t even spoiled by other garbage. He thought about that one bodega on 21st that sometimes placed small packages of toiletries and other such things next to their own bins, knowing that the city’s resident homeless would regularly swing by for their discarded and expired, but still perfectly good, food, and how some kind soul working there wanted to make sure they got some of the other living essentials, too.

  


He almost jumped out of his skin as the man outside slammed his fist on the lid of the bin once more, the sound of the man’s furious cursing barely even reaching him over the sound of the blood pounding in his ears as he desperately tried to curb the rising swell of burning power flooding his veins and transforming his body. His left hand was already completely gone, just a twitching and writhing mass of ink-like dust where it used to be.

  


_Please go_ , he desperately pleaded, staring at the man’s shadow from beneath the edge of the lid. _Please_.

  


He could feel his instincts start to shift, felt rage begin to cloud his mind as the change came closer, not needing to look at his body to know that his outline was blurry and indistinct as he came within mere hairsbreadths of losing control entirely. Every ounce of his focus was on suppressing the form’s telekinetic power, knowing that if even a single bit of garbage was lifted or moved, the man would hear him, just as he knew that if the man opened that lid, it would be all over. The change would take over completely, and the man would be ripped apart.

  


Just as a start.

  


Each moment stretched into a thousand as the creature inside him thrashed and tore and begged to be released, every inch of his skin burning with the power trapped beneath it, his head pounding from the strain of suppressing the creature’s abilities as he lay there silently, waiting.

  


“Damn pickpockets,” the man outside growled before pounding on the dumpster lid one last time and turning away.

  


The boy still didn’t dare to breathe as he listed to the faint click of the man’s footsteps as he stalked away, terrified of alerting the man to his presence at the last moment. Finally, though, the man’s footsteps were swallowed up by the sounds of the street, leaving the boy alone in the dark, nothing to listen to but the rage-filled cries of the creature inside as he finally started taking in deep, gasping breaths. Ever so slowly, though, his heart-rate slowed, and he was able to painstakingly regain control of his body, wrestling his altered form deep into the darkest recesses of his being as he forced his calming body to re-materialize completely.

  


Raising his left hand, he smiled at seeing pale, filthy skin rather than swirling dust. Shakily, he sat up in the disgusting refuse and cautiously lifted the lid of the dumpster half an inch, squinting through the crack to make sure the man was truly gone.

  


He was.

  


With a relieved sigh, he lifted the lid completely and stood up in the dumpster, finally able to breathe fresh(-ish) air once more.

  


“Yeah, that’s right, you better run,” he called out weakly towards the mouth of the alley before falling back on the refuse beneath him, too tired and relieved to stand.

  


“I really need to stop doing those Hail Mary runs,” he told himself for about the dozenth time, his arm draped across his perspiring forehead. Looking down, he reached into one of the pockets of his ragged, over-sized coat to see if this latest little jaunt was actually worth it.

  


“… Twelve bucks? Seriously?” He groaned as he flipped through the plain black leather wallet, hoping to find a hidden pocket or something. “Why would you even bother chasing someone for twelve measly dollars?” Scoffing in disgust, he tossed the man’s wallet over his shoulder, safely securing the pathetic wad of bills that had been inside it.

  


Sighing, he reached into another pocket, pulling out a slightly more ornate brown leather wallet lifted from a member of the crowd he had darted through.

  


“Let’s see if you have something better,” he muttered with a grin.

  


Thirteen wallets later, he was richer by 616 dollars, three coffee shop punch cards, and a Yogurtland rewards card. The credit and debit cards he left alone, not really feeling the need to _completely_ screw over those people’s lives. On top of the cash, though, he also picked up two bracelets and three fairly nice-looking watches, including one _really_ fancy watch from the last guy he swiped before turning down the alley. All in all, not a bad take for just one pass.

  


“Maybe I should do another run over on 13th,” he wondered, before his still-wobbly legs put the kibosh on that particular idea. “Maybe tomorrow, then,” he decided instead, climbing to his feet and leaving a small pile of leather wallets in the dumpster behind him, not considering it all that smart to carry that much evidence on his person just for the chance to make a few more bucks fencing a couple of wallets. After all, if the cops stopped you, it was kind of hard to come up with a reasonable explanation for having 14 wallets in your bag.

  


However, as he started to climb out of the dumpster, he felt something hard and smooth shift under his ragged trainers. Looking down, he saw the battered corner of something silver poking its way through a pile of garbage that did not bear describing. Crouching down, he carefully extracted whatever it was from the surrounding refuse, revealing an old laptop that had clearly seen better days. However, it wasn’t completely mangled or busted, so he shrugged and slipped it into his decidedly more battered backpack before hopping out of the dumpster.

  


Stepping over to the side, he carefully rearranged the wooden boxes he had used to make it into the dumpster in the first place, making sure they were in position if he ended up needing to repeat his little maneuver. This was actually a very likely possibility, given how many times he had used this particular alley for just this purpose. It was practically a gold mine of cover, with numerous doors, boxes, and other dumpsters lining the alley all the way through from one end to the other, which was exactly why the man hadn’t even known where to start looking for him, and why he preferred doing those Hail Mary runs on the streets leading to it.

  


After all, if you were pulling a move as risky as deliberately getting caught picking someone’s pocket so you could make multiple lifts in the distraction they caused, you’d better have an escape option ready. Otherwise, you were just being suicidal.

  


As he headed for the opposite end of the alley, his stomach started growling loudly at him.

  


“Hey, I’m working on it, mate. Cut me a little slack,” he responded indignantly, joining the mass of pedestrians walking along the street outside.

  


Hearing a faint crackle of thunder, he looked up at the sky, noting its solid gray and ominously dark shade.

  


“Perfect,” he muttered to himself, grimacing at what seemed to be a cold, wet night in the making.

  


* * *

  


A few hours later, the clouds decided to make good on their threat of rain, sending a torrential downpour all over the city, and one distinctly cold and miserable boy in particular.

  


Said boy staggered down the dark, water-logged streets with his hands tucked deeply into his armpits in a desperate attempt to preserve warmth as his icy wet clothes clung to his skin like plastic wrap.

  


Brushing his soaking wet hair out of his eyes, he blinked as he looked up at a likely spot where he could find some shelter.

  


A library.

  


A few less than legal acts later, and he was scrubbing his hand through his dripping mop of hair as he walked down the dark, but decidedly warm, labyrinths of bookshelves. Before long, he was setting his dripping backpack on a wooden table set up in an out-of-the-way corner of the library, ostensibly so one could read or study in relative quiet and seclusion, but which suited him even better as a place to kip for the night.

  


It certainly wouldn’t be the first time he’d made use of a library for such. Assuming you came after the janitors, libraries tended to remain empty until morning, and you even had books to entertain yourself with if you didn’t feel like immediately knocking out.

  


Of course, he had a certain something else besides reading on his mind at the moment, and so, without further ado, he yanked a more than slightly damp plastic-wrapped parcel out of his soggy bag, unwrapping it to reveal a thankfully still dry Sub Haven sandwich purchased with his ill-gotten gains from earlier.

  


For the next several minutes, all that could be heard was the crunch of lettuce and grateful moans as he tore into his sandwich.

  


_Hmm. A bit too much bread_ , he mused once he reached the second half of the sandwich and had finally curbed his hunger enough to think. _I guess Delmar’s really are better_.

  


Shrugging, he happily continued eating his still very filling sandwich, only this time while emptying the other contents of his bag on the table in front of him.

  


Peeling aside more soggy plastic, he slid the battered laptop onto the table. Flipping it open, he tried pressing the power button.

  


No response, unsurprisingly.

  


Stuffing his mouth with the remnants of his sandwich, he flipped the computer over, curious about whether he could remove the back to get at the components inside to figure out what was busted. Unfortunately, this apparently required tools, which he didn’t have.

  


His cheeks puffed out from his sandwich, he leaned back in his chair and studied the bookshelves next to him. Sure enough, he could see tiny screwed-in brackets holding parts of the shelves together.

  


Nodding, he got up from his seat and started hunting.

  


* * *

  


Several minutes later, he had draped his soggy coat over the back of a chair and was elbow deep in the guts of the laptop, a small toolbox he had known they would have somewhere open on the table beside him. After all, the people who ran the library needed some way of repairing things like wobbly shelves or squeaky chairs.

  


As he worked on the battered laptop, he found himself amazed by just how … _intuitive_ it was. It just made sense to him. All it took was a little patience and an observant, inquisitive nature, and the different bits and pieces started whispering their secrets to him, teaching him even as he took them apart and repaired them.

  


Soon, he found himself doing more than just repairing the laptop. Hours felt like seconds as he immersed himself in the moment, completely in the zone as he began outright modifying the laptop, reinforcing certain parts while bypassing others, not even questioning his instincts as he lost track of the physical sensations of his body, of the still damp shirt clinging to his back, or the crick in his neck from being hunched over, so caught up in his tinkering.

  


He didn’t even notice when certain parts began moving without him even touching them, the power of the uncontrollable creature inside for once moving in perfect harmony with him as he modified the computer with both hands and mind.

  


Unfortunately, modifying the existing components of the laptop could only go so far.

  


He needed more.

  


Not even questioning his actions, he set the laptop down and left, returning minutes later with an older desktop computer reclaimed from another part of the library. From there, he immediately began breaking down the larger computer, scavenging the components he needed to continue his work.

  


Pieces that should have been too large or improperly shaped were molded like taffy in his hands as more and more of his power came to the fore, answering the call he unknowingly sent out while in the throes of obsessive tinkering, his unique state of mind at the moment allowing him a level of instinctive level of control he had never before known.

  


And so he worked. Pieces were welded with sparks appearing out of thin air, unquestioned. Other pieces were screwed into place by hand while still others simply found themselves fixed into their envisioned spot as if they’d never been anywhere else. He barely registered this.

  


Hours later, he finally straightened from his task, his body making itself known once again with a series of agonized groans and crackling pops as his muscles and joints protested their prolonged contortion over the computer. He blinked his burning eyes and rubbed his temples, his journey back to reality from that obsessively focused mindspace more than a little disorienting.

  


As for the laptop itself, at a glance, it appeared relatively unchanged. It still bore the scuffed, scratched silver finish. Its interior workings, however, were now completely unrecognizable.

  


What he had found to be a clunky, inefficient design had been streamlined, customized to the point that the various pieces shared virtually nothing in common with their larger, original components. More components and processes had even been made to fit inside the laptop’s inner workings due to the overhaul, as he found ways to rework the various elements to accomplish their intended purpose while only taking up a fraction of the space. The desktop computer at his side resembled nothing more than an empty shell surrounded by a slew of parts due to how thoroughly it had been scavenged for components for his new creation.

  


As for the newly re-minted laptop, well, it was time for testing. And so, without further ado, he gently flipped it over, opened the lid, and pressed the power button.

  


… nothing.

  


Frowning, he flipped the computer back over, checking to see if he had made a mistake somewhere, or if a component was loose. However, as he began checking various connections, his eyes fell on one component in particular.

  


Groaning, he face-palmed.

  


_The battery_. _Duh_.

  


He had fished the laptop out of a dumpster, after all. Of course it needed charging before it could be used.

  


Unfortunately, as he snapped the laptop battery out of its socket, he realized that this would be a bit of an issue. After all, he didn’t have a charging cord, meaning the only way this thing would be getting any juice was if he jury-rigged some kind of charging system.

  


Unfortunately, just as he started contemplating how he might build something like that, the creature inside decided to throw its own two cents into the mix.

  


Gasping, he fell off the table and collapsed onto the cold wooden floor as his body seized. The creature inside thrashed and snarled, apparently insulted by their previous unheard-of synergy, and now determined to retaliate by bursting free even without an emotional trigger.

  


“You know, you really suck,” he hissed through painfully clenched teeth, every muscle in his body spasming as he fought the creature for control. His veins burned with the creature’s sheer power as he fought tooth and nail to keep it locked away. After all, he knew just what would happen if it got free. Death, destruction, screams of terror, and re-broken laptops galore. Kind of annoying.

  


And so he fought. It felt like wrestling a creature larger and fiercer and stronger than him in every way possible, but he refused to give up. He couldn’t afford to. He absolutely _refused_ to wake up to another wasteland of ruin and devastation.

  


He wasn’t sure when the bookshelves around him started getting tossed around by the creature’s power. He barely even saw the heavy volumes whipping around his head like a tempest. He did know one thing, though, and as he strained and groaned and fought, he dedicated himself to that one fact above all others:

  


That goddamn laptop on the table in front of him wasn’t going anywhere.

  


It was such a petty thing to focus on. In fact, it was downright stupid in the face of everything else. The creature inside promised violence and destruction, possibly for the entire city, and yet he found himself focusing on one stupid laptop fished out of the garbage and pieced back together with scraps torn from a practically prehistoric library computer, which was now circling him in pieces as the creature’s power raged on. And yet his eyes remained glued to the laptop on the table. It shook and vibrated as the creature’s power tried to fling it into the air like everything else, but he denied it. His face broke out into a sweat and his jaw ached from how tightly it was clenched, and yet he _refused_ to give the creature the satisfaction of destroying something he had worked so hard on. It was petty, and it was stupid, but he would not let the creature destroy that grungy old laptop. For him, that laptop became everything he tried to protect from the creature. The city, the people … himself. In that moment, all of them were wrapped up in that battered gray heap of plastic, and he was going to defend it. Garbage smell and all, he was going to defend it.

  


Line in the sand drawn, he fought on. The creature tore and pushed, but empowered as he was by his one uncompromising point, he didn’t budge. His form wavered and shifted, the change into the creature’s amorphous body imminent. And yet he planted his feet on that razor’s edge between himself and the creature, and he did not move. His blurry, shifting form remained caught on that threshold, the body neither fully his own nor fully the creature’s, and dear god did that ever piss the creature off.

  


Its screeches of rage became physically audible as it tried to claw its way closer into being, but he refused, his eyes locked onto the laptop as they struggled over it like dogs with a chew-toy. The creature dragged more and more of its power to the surface, attempting to simply overpower him with brute strength as it lashed out against his defiance like a building-sized toddler throwing a temper tantrum.

  


As his eyes flickered between glowing green and solid white within his ceaselessly shifting body, and as the very wall behind him and floor beneath him started cracking under the creature’s power, he felt himself feeling more than just desperation, or even relentless determination.

  


He felt anger.

  


Something inside him snapped, and he no longer focused on forcing the creature back. He focused on making it _suffer_.

  


Without warning, he stopped pushing against the creature’s power, leaving the creature reeling with surprise. However, just as it started gloating in victory, assuming he was giving up, he made his move. Screaming with effort, he pulled the creature’s power into himself, for the first time in his life accepting the creature’s power instead of trying to suppress it. The creature was too off balance from this unheard-of move to defend against it, and so, for a brief moment, he had all the power the creature had dragged to the surface at his fingertips, and he was going to use it.

  


Just … not in the way the creature had intended.

  


The creature’s growls of fury turned to howls of pain as he took all that power, all that energy, and directed it inwards. His body burned and glowed with emerald light as the creature’s own power flooded every inch of his form, wracking his body with pain as every particle was scorched. However, just as that power burned him, it also burned the creature.

  


An agonized laugh bubbled up in his throat as he finally struck back at the creature that had tormented him for so long. He didn’t even care about the fact that they shared the body that was being scorched, or about the agony he was feeling himself as arcs of green lightning raced up and down his body. All that mattered was that he was taking the creature down with him.

  


And it worked.

  


Screeching and yowling in pain, the creature slowly but surely retreated, withdrawing into its home in the darkest recesses of his being not only to avoid the pain he was inflicting upon it, but out of fatigue from him draining its energy for the attack, leaving it without the strength it needed to fight back. His body flickered with the emerald glow of the creature’s now depleting stolen power, and the bolts of green lightning were reduced to mere sparks as they raced down his arms and danced across his skin, but he kept up the attack, not letting up until the creature was both thoroughly wounded and completely drained. As he did, he kept his eyes on his outline, and how it was solidifying with the creature’s retreat.

  


However, even as the glow died and the creature fully withdrew, along with what remained of its power, he knew that this was only a temporary victory. He had caught the creature by surprise with his maneuver, and that was the only reason it had worked as well as it did. The creature would be on guard against that tactic in the future, and it wouldn’t let him simply seize control of all its power like that again.

  


Of course, a temporary victory was still a victory, and it was one he accepted gladly as a dry, cracking laugh made its way from between his lips, his cheek pressed against the crumbling floor as he struggled to regain control of his tortured limbs.

  


As he flopped one arm in front of his face to help leverage himself up, he noticed that his skin was smoking from the massive surge of energy. As he forced himself up to his knees, he saw that this even extended to the floor he had been lying on, which now had a person-shaped scorch mark on it. Thankfully—albeit strangely—his clothes were not simply ashes like he expected, though they were steaming much like his skin was.

  


Before he could question that bizarre fact, however, a spasm in his hand drew his attention elsewhere. Namely, to the laptop battery still clutched in his hand.

  


Wincing, he slowly pried open his cramped fingers and peeled the battery pack off his skin, finding it had left a crisp outline of itself on his reddened palm.

  


Of course, he was currently more interested in how the battery pack was quietly humming. In fact, as he took it in his right hand and carefully checked it over, he even found that the entire thing was vibrating faintly, and his fingertips tingled as he handled it.

  


_You mean that stupid creature was actually useful for once?_ he asked himself in astonishment as he stared at the apparently supercharged battery. _I guess miracles do happen_.

  


Wincing, he climbed painfully to his feet, staggering over the piles of broken shelves and discarded books as he made his way to the table and laptop, which were about the only things still intact within 30 feet of him.

  


Pausing, he stared at the humming battery pack in his hands, and then down at the laptop, which might explode or something if he plugged this thing into it, for all he knew.

  


The smart thing to do would probably be to test the battery first, maybe hook it up to something small and make sure that whatever weird energy he’d accidentally forced into the battery from his other form wasn’t nuclear or something.

  


_Screw it_ , he decided instead, clicking the battery into place. _No guts, no glory_.

  


And so, without further ado, he pressed the power button.

  


The laptop hummed as it turned on, its screen flickering through a riotous cascade of colors before lighting up with its welcome logo.

  


He cautiously peeked around the edge of the broken shelf he was holding up as a shield as the computer loaded insanely quickly and arrived at its desktop page.

  


After watching for a minute and determining that it might not be about to explode after all, he slowly lowered the board and closed the 10-foot gap he had hastily placed between himself and the computer.

  


Cautiously, he sat down on the table in front of the computer and began running through its processes.

  


After a good deal of clicking and typing, he concluded that the computer apparently worked perfectly. In fact, it worked better than perfectly, with everything loading almost instantly.

  


He grinned at the sight, pleased beyond words that his first foray into what he could already see becoming his favorite hobby was working out so well.

  


Meaning it was of course inevitable that the computer would spark and die mere seconds later.

  


He slumped down with an explosive sigh of disappointment at the sight.

  


_I guess it couldn’t handle the energy source after all_ , he thought as he sadly pulled the still quietly humming battery pack out of the laptop, waving away faint hints of smoke coming from underneath the laptop’s casing as he did so.

  


Wincing in expectation, he slowly unscrewed the casing and reopened the bottom of the laptop, only to immediately close it up once more as it absolutely belted out a cloud of acrid smoke.

  


_Great_ , he groused to himself as he collapsed backwards on the table, staring at the ceiling in disappointment. _After all that, half of the freaking thing is fried. Just perfect_.

  


Sighing, he turned his gaze to the battery pack in his hand.

  


_Maybe I need to design a new type of battery_ , he considered. _Maybe one that’s actually meant to handle whatever kind of energy I generate, and can distribute it safely without frying the entire system after just two seconds_.

  


Unfortunately, designing an entirely new power storage system for an energy source he didn’t even understand was a whole different animal than figuring out how to make a few modifications to a laptop. Sure, he could think of some _very_ bare-bones ideas, but he didn’t have nearly the knowledge he needed to figure out how to manage that.

  


Blinking, he sat up and stared at the pile of books strewn across the ground.

  


_I guess I need to study_ , he thought with a determined grin.

  


* * *

  


And so the rest of his night was spent pouring over volumes, cramming his head full of whatever technical or scientific books he could find, often leaving his ever-growing stack to hunt down more.

  


When morning came, the library was unlocked to the sight of complete devastation in the nook he had claimed as his own, both as the result of the destruction caused by his altered form and because of a less than tidy and more than slightly obsessive boy leaving even more volumes strewn about.

  


As for him, though, he was long gone. As the first slivers of pink-hued sunlight started to filter their way through the windows, he gathered his things and skedaddled, though this time while burdened with more than a few books he wasn’t quite finished reading yet, as well as one small toolbox to continue work on his laptop.

  


Over the next week, he continued his studying, though not anywhere near the original library, which was swarming with police and surrounded by whispers of “bomb” and “break-in,” neither of which he wanted associated with himself on any level. Instead, he spent his days in other public libraries throughout the city, his small form practically hidden behind growing stacks of books as he read up on engineering and computers, and even on subjects like physics and chemistry, because hey, why not, right?

  


As he feasted on the treasure troves of knowledge he found at his fingertips, he found himself satisfying a hunger he hadn’t even known he had. He was absolutely enthralled by these books that strove to make sense of the world around him, which he found even more compelling due to his constant experience with the creature inside him. Honestly, it wasn’t just the fact of its existence that terrified him about the creature, nor was it what it could do. Instead, it was how he was so completely unable to understand it, or its power, that scared him so deeply. He had no idea where it came from, or how it could do what it did, and that made it far more terrifying to him than any irate business man chasing him because he nicked his wallet.

  


These books, though … even if they still left him at a loss to explain what that damn creature inside him was, or its power, he found their efforts to make sense of everything else deeply, _deeply_ appealing.

  


And so he read. When his stomach screamed at him for nourishment, he left for just long enough to cram down enough to keep him going, and then he returned to his studies. When the library closed, he left for a few hours, and when everyone was gone, he broke back in and kept right on studying.

  


And that was why, several days later, he found himself wandering the streets as he waited for his latest chosen library to empty itself of people so he could break back in and continue his reading. However, as he wandered, his hand drifted to one of his interior coat pockets, and the plain notebook he kept there.

  


A few days ago, he had picked up the notebook when on one of his food runs, and he had since filled several pages with designs for the power-cell he thought might be able to house the energy he generated. Unfortunately, no matter how he tried to rework it, the fact remained that his designs all relied on materials he didn’t have access to, not to mention tools he didn’t have, as well as a space to use them in, which he also lacked.

  


Basically, it all came down to one thing:

  


Money.

  


Depressed and dispirited, he wandered the streets, aimlessly turning down alleys and moving down sidewalks as he tried to think his way around the problem in front of him, but couldn’t. He casually side-stepped the larger and perpetually rushing adults streaming around him on the sidewalk as he continued meandering, this time while pulling the original laptop battery out of his pack to stare at it, hoping for inspiration.

  


The battery still hummed faintly with energy from its original charge, apparently having lost little or none of the power he had accidentally funneled into it.

  


He sighed, continuing his mindless wander as he brooded on his situation.

  


The creature inside him had been uncharacteristically quiet for the past several days, not once trying to rear its head or fight him for release. This blessed silence made it feel like a fog had been lifted from over his mind, allowing him to think clearly and actually feel free for the first time in a long time, but he knew this wouldn’t last. The creature would get its strength back, and it would bust out. This was inevitable.

  


He started flipping the battery pack in his hands as he walked, subconsciously avoiding the crowds and meandering down emptier and emptier streets.

  


When this whole thing started, he thought he was on the track to finally gaining some measure of control over the creature. Not only was he actually able to harness the creature’s power when he was so caught up in tinkering with the laptop, but draining the creature of energy like he did had been enough to keep it quiet for days afterwards. If he could find a way to repeat that, maybe force the creature’s energy into a battery of some kind, or maybe into some other kind of tech and not just into an indiscriminate attack against his own body, then he might theoretically be able to keep it weak enough to stay locked away for good, and if that wasn’t enough, then maybe if he found something to tinker with, he could return to that bizarre state of mind that had so successfully leashed the creature before, and who knows, he might be able to keep it from busting out even if it did have the strength to make the attempt.

  


These ideas were the closest thing he had felt to hope for a long time, but they both still came down to the exact same goddamn problem:

  


Mother-freaking money.

  


He needed money for parts. He needed money for materials. He needed money for tools. He needed money for a space to use these tools. Moneymoneymoneymoneymoney.

  


Sure, he had a few hundred bucks to his name, and he could pick a few pockets here and there to make a few bucks more, but that wasn’t enough. Not for anything long term. Not for something as important as this.

  


Finally, he stopped his wandering, standing alone in a dingy, empty street lit by flickering streetlights as he hefted the battery pack that had originally given him hope, tantalizing him with promises and possibilities, only to keep those hopes just out of reach.

  


His face twisted with despair as he cocked back his arm, and with a cry of hopeless fury, he tossed the battery at a wall as hard as he could.

  


The battery getting smashed to pieces? That, he expected. The surge of humming emerald light exploding outwards? Not so much.

  


With a startled cry, he fell back on the ground and covered his face as the wave of light rushed towards him, followed by the sound of a cacophony of electrical sparks and crackling, and some weird chorus of clicking noises, like a bunch of fans that suddenly started clipping against something before finally stopping. However, as everything fell silent, he opened his clenched eyes and stared down at his body, apparently completely unharmed. Sitting up, he nervously patted himself down just to be sure, but nope, no injuries of any kind. However, as he started looking around, he started to understand why.

  


The mangled remnants of the laptop battery lay scattered on the pavement beneath a black scorch mark on the concrete wall of the building, but that was pretty much the only physical damage. Instead, he found himself staring at an unbelievably dark street, every light in the vicinity shut off. It looked like the city during a black out, but only reaching as far as a few buildings in every direction.

  


As he stared around at the unnervingly silent street around him, he started wondering what had happened.

  


_An electromagnetic pulse, maybe?_ he theorized as he walked over and nudged what little remained of the battery that had been charged with his weird power. However, his attention was quickly drawn away from his revelation that the energy his other form produced could shut down electronics by a hundred-dollar bill floating past his face.

  


His eyes bulged as he stared at the free-floating Franklin before hastily diving after it and snatching it out of the air.

  


_What the hell_ …

  


He turned and looked at where it had come from, and his jaw almost hit the floor.

  


He hadn’t noticed, but attached to the building he’d chucked the battery at were three ATMs, which were now completely dark and absolutely surrounded by piles and piles of cash.

  


_I guess that explains the clicking noise_ , he numbly observed, realizing he had been hearing the mechanisms that spit out money going into overdrive before shutting down.

  


Staggering over, he reflexively started shoveling armloads of cash into his bag, barely even thinking straight as he stared at the machines, which had apparently overloaded and simply ejected everything inside when struck by the wave of energy from the ruptured battery. However, as he continued sweeping up handfuls of sweet, glorious green bits of paper, he became filled with panic and started furtively glancing around as he remembered a little detail called “cameras.” However, as he stared up at the black glass bubble over the ATMs that housed just such a camera, he realized that it would have been shut down by the pseudo-EMP too.

  


A nervous, nearly hysterical giggle started to spill free as he swept up the last remnants of loose cash, checking around to make sure he hadn’t missed any.

  


He wouldn’t want to be accused of littering, after all.

  


His part to protect the environment completed, he booked it. He didn’t even look in his bag to see how much he’d made. He just ran, knowing the street wouldn’t be empty forever and _absolutely_ not wanting to be anywhere near it when the authorities figured out what happened.

  


Well, as much as they could understand it, anyway.

  


Several blocks away, he ducked into an abandoned dark alley, glancing side to side before kneeling and pulling his bag free.

  


Swallowing, he slowly unzipped the bag, his eyes growing wider and wider with every inch as he revealed a bag stuffed to the absolute brim with cash. His hand wavered with nervous shock as he gently pawed through the dense pile of bills, his mind almost unable to process how much money he had in front of him. He shifted through stacks of twenties, piles of fifties, even mounds of hundred-dollar bills.

  


His bag was practically bursting at the seams.

  


As he continued to shuffle through the beautiful pile of sweet, sweet moolah, his hand brushed against the chipped, slightly sticky plastic of the battery-less laptop.

  


Suddenly, he froze, his eyes darting from side to side as he thought furiously. Looking back down, he stared at the laptop he was in such dire need of materials for, then at the empty slot where the battery he had supercharged with his weird power had come from, and then at the insane fortune that battery had just netted him.

  


A wicked grin slowly spread across his face.

  


* * *

  


**Present day**

  


That same boy was jostled from his story-telling by the sound of loud, obnoxious snores coming from his one-man audience.

  


He ceased his soldering of one of his mangled devices to look over at the proclaimed genius sitting upright with his head lolled over onto his shoulder, letting loose another feigned, dramatic snore.

  


“Really?” he demanded, torn between amusement and indignation.

  


With a clearly fake snort, Tony “jerked awake.”

  


“Hmm? Oh, did I fall asleep?” he asked facetiously, fooling no-one. “I’m sorry, it’s just that I’m so incredibly bored by this story.”

  


This time, there was no question as to whether he was more amused or indignant.

  


“Dude!”

  


“Oh, come on! Get to the good stuff already!” Tony cajoled, bouncing on the desk like a small child demanding the movie skip ahead to his favorite part. “Yeah, I get it: ‘Constantly at war with the beast inside,’ ‘good with tech,’ ‘steals stuff out of desperation or some vaguely noble or non-selfish reason and things,’ blah blah blah. Skip ahead to the fun parts!” Tony helped himself to another handful of blueberries while staring at him expectantly.

  


“Wow. You are a terrible person,” he remarked in astonishment. “You know, this could all be really emotionally traumatic for me. I mean, finally opening myself up and telling someone my story, only to get shut down like that …”

  


“Hey, there’s no need to be a pussy about it,” Tony blithely responded in a remarkable show of compassion.

  


He let out a snort of amused disbelief at the man’s callous remark before his eyes narrowed slightly. “Alright, you want me to skip to the fun parts? Well, there was this one time where I totally saved this one goateed idiot’s ass. That was pretty fun.”

  


“Nah, that sounds really boring,” Tony cut in quickly. “But come on! You’re a master criminal, apparently! Skip to the part where you actually break into a place and steal some shit.”

  


“You are a child,” the young boy observed.

  


“That doesn’t sound like a story about you breaking into a place and stealing some shit,” Tony pointed out.

  


He sighed. “Okay, _fine_. There was this one time …”


	3. … Now we here

**Less than one year ago**

  


The sounds of revelry and polite conversation echoed throughout an enormous, lush mansion as well-dressed men and women in suits and cocktail dresses mingled about, glasses of champagne in hand and tired but proud smiles on their faces.

  


However, one and all, the party-goers stopped and turned to face the top of a wide, sweeping staircase, where, as was apparently the law with such functions, the host had just stepped forward to give a speech.

  


“My friends,” he began grandiosely, spreading his arms wide as if to embrace them all, “I want to thank you for all the hard work you’ve done over this past quarter. It wasn’t easy, I know. In fact, I think you’ll agree that the success of this particular group’s project has been more than a little murky up until this point, to say the least.”

  


All but one of the guests nodded in chagrined agreement with the somewhat pompous man’s statement.

  


“However,” the man continued, slowly pacing back and forth atop the marble staircase, “you didn’t let that stop you. No, as befitting some of the greatest minds of this world, you pressed on. Even when failures piled up like dirt over a coffin, you continued. And it is exactly because of that dedication that we have succeeded in our latest little project, and in so doing, have come one step closer to raising the entire world out of the fog of failure, and ignorance, and sickness, and limitations, and to instead bringing them all to the light of a future that can only be achieved … by technology.” He paused to flash them all a charming grin as he finished what one particular member of the audience considered to be fairly unsubtle negging. “And that is why your entire group will be receiving a hefty bonus!”

  


Almost all the guests broke out in wild cheers at this news.

  


Again, except for one.

  


_You might not want to be too hasty with promises like that_ , one tall, balding man thought with a smile, raising a glass of champagne to his lips to hide his smirk. _You might not have the funds to keep them, soon_.

  


“Audio download complete,” a robotic female voice quietly sounded in his ear as the host swaggered down the steps to mingle among his elated guests.

  


_Thank God for long-winded party hosts_ , he thought with a smile, setting his untouched champagne on a table and nimbly maneuvering through the shifting crowd towards their sleekly dressed host, who was surrounded by equal parts grateful and outright sycophantic guests.

  


“Mr. K!” he called out enthusiastically in a distinct Southern twang upon reaching the man, a vaguely simpering smile on his face.

  


“Hello there … Bert, was it?” the man replied, a clearly fake and somewhat condescending smile on his own face.

  


“Yessir, it is!” he cheerfully confirmed. “I just wanted to say thank you so much for your generosity in opening up your home and sharing some of your wealth with us little guys.”

  


“Oh, it’s my pleasure,” the host replied in a mixture of politeness and smugness. “Your think tank certainly deserves it. And besides, what is money for if not for sharing with people like yourself?”

  


The balding man’s grin took on a slightly wicked tint at that. “My thoughts exactly.”

  


“Visual scan complete,” the robotic female voice sounded in his ear once again.

  


_Time to wrap things up_ , he thought gratefully.

  


“Well, I just wanted to say thanks again.” He held out his hand to shake.

  


“Oh, don’t mention it,” the host replied, taking the man’s hand. As he did, though, his brow furrowed in slight confusion at the rather bizarre feel to the other man’s hand. However, the other guests vying for his attention quickly distracted him, and as he was whirled away by the flow of the party, it left his mind completely.

  


“Fingerprint scan complete,” the balding man’s system informed him. With a definite bounce in his step, he began making his way through the party in the other direction, carefully stepping around chatting guests and wandering servers.

  


“Did you hear about the work group number seven has been doing?” he overheard one woman ask the people around her.

  


“I know. It’s mind-blowing!” one man exclaimed in response. “It’ll change the face of medicine!”

  


“Forget medicine. It’ll change the face of the world!” another man proclaimed before the balding man moved out of earshot.

  


As he walked, his watch suddenly beeped at him.

  


_Shit_ , he thought in a panic, picking up his pace.

  


“Bert?” one woman called out in surprise as he hurried past. “I thought you couldn’t make it tonight.”

  


“And miss this party? Not on your life!” he called back in his Southern twang, not stopping as he made his way to the far side of the room.

  


Quickly glancing around at the distracted party-goers, he slipped through a side door and entered a small, shadowy niche leading to an empty hallway.

  


Just in time, the image of the aged, balding man crackled and faded away, revealing a small, dark figure eccentrically dressed in a mixture of what looked like thin armor plating and somewhat clunky devices strapped down over it.

  


“They’re burning out quick, lately,” the boy muttered, the man’s Southern-accented voice still being emitted by the mask covering his nose and mouth. Raising one gloved hand, the boy pressed a button on the side of the mask and cleared his throat.

  


“I guess I need to rework the energy housing system again,” he quietly groused, this time in a mechanically distorted voice that bore no trace of the previous accent, though it did contain hints of an English one. “Yippee.”

  


With a quiet hiss, he ejected a small, smoking cartridge from the armor on the side of his thigh before sliding a replacement into its slot and pocketing the old one.

  


“Alright, let’s see what we’re working with,” he whispered, pressing the side of his green-glowing goggles.

  


Immediately, his vision of the world shifted. To his eyes, the entire area lit up with an array of emerald lines that traced the floor, walls, and ceiling, giving him a perfect view of the room regardless of light and dark. More than that, though, it allowed him to see a sketched-view of the hallway crossing in front of him despite the walls between him and it.

  


Inside the walls themselves, he saw a series of golden lines running to and fro, including up to the ceiling, where several terminated in lights and cameras, though thankfully, and as anticipated, none of the latter were positioned properly to see into the shadowy alcove he was crouched in.

  


“Good. No change,” he commented to himself, happy to see that the camera arrangement hadn’t been inexplicably changed since his recon trip several days ago.

  


“Time to go invisible,” he narrated, pressing a button on his upper arm and hearing a quiet hum as the field was activated.

  


Without further ado, he stepped into the hallway and started towards his destination downstairs.

  


Of course, “go invisible” was a bit of a misnomer. His diminutive form was still perfectly visible to the naked eye. However, with the disruption field activate, no electronic devices could perceive him, rendering him, effectively, invisible to cameras. Honestly, though, he wasn’t entirely certain why. The way he designed it was that any light that bounced off his body and through the field would essentially be corrupted by the energy field just enough that electronic devices couldn’t interpret them, capitalizing on just how much normal technology did not seem to respond well at all to his power. However, he was at a loss to explain why this didn’t leave a shadowy imprint of his general shape on camera, which he had expected, since he should be blocking the image of everything on the other side of him. But for some reason, this didn’t happen. He was simply invisible to electronic devices.

  


A useful ability for his line of work, though, to put it lightly, and certainly not a gift horse he’d be looking in the mouth anytime soon.

  


As he walked unhindered down the hallway, he glanced back behind him at the main party room, where he could see a mass of crimson light, on the fringes of which he could make out coherent outlines of people, as they were separated enough from the rest of the guests to be distinct.

  


However, he saw no such outlines anywhere else nearby. In fact, the closest he saw looked like they were on the floor above him, and he quickly averted his gaze as the closeness of their ruby outlines suggested they were in the middle of … “activities.”

  


Coughing uncomfortably, he continued on his way.

  


_Freaking parties_.

  


“Ah, here we go,” he said as he reached what looked like just an unremarkable door. Assuming, of course, that one could not see energy and, by extension, all the wires in the walls running towards said unremarkable door.

  


“DNA scan complete,” the robotic female voice finally chimed in, just in time.

  


“Perfect,” he remarked happily. Pressing a couple of buttons on his right forearm, he watched as the glove he shook the host’s hand with appeared to morph and shift until it resembled a perfect copy of the man’s hand, albeit made out of a black, metallic cloth-like material.

  


Tapping the wall next to the door, a panel slid back, revealing a fingerprint and DNA scanner.

  


Placing the faux-hand on the scanner, he waited patiently as the system checked him.

  


With a gentle beep and an affirmative green light, the door slid open.

  


“‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends,’” he said to himself as he stepped through into a small landing leading to the top of a dark staircase.

  


As the door slid closed behind him, though, he didn’t walk down. Instead, he stared at the myriad of defenses he could identify along the staircase, including pressure-sensitive floor panels on every step and, just to top it off, motion-sensing lasers crisscrossing the air above them, packed so densely together that nothing larger than a weirdly agile toddler would be making it through. Usually, the lasers wouldn’t be visible at all, but thanks to his energy-sensitive goggles, this wasn’t a problem for him.

  


If any of these systems were triggered, they would immediately force the vault below into a complete lockdown, rendering it completely unopenable, on top of the alarm being set off and both the building’s security office and the authorities being notified.

  


Needless to say, not something he wanted.

  


On a normal day, all these systems would be deactivated at the security office by the chief of security while someone—namely, the owner of the house, their ever-illustrious host tonight—went down to the vault. Unfortunately, these couldn’t just be shut down at the security office before heading down to the vault, as he had discovered when he paid that office a visit earlier that evening. The system required that they be deactivated simultaneously with someone opening the door he just went through, which was less than feasible for someone who was incapable of appearing in two places at once—namely, him. He had been able to block the alert the office would receive from the door being opened, but as far as the defenses themselves went, he was on his own.

  


Meaning he had to improvise.

  


“God save us all from paranoid nut-jobs,” he muttered to himself in amusement as he disconnected most of his equipment and stored it in a bag that held far more than anything its size logically should. At least, it did if one didn’t understand the mechanics behind spatial manipulation and sub-dimensional storage.

  


Now with a much smaller, sleeker profile, with all his bulkier tech set aside in the small bag strapped behind his back, he warmed up his gravity rig.

  


Popping his neck and swinging his limbs around, he loosened himself up before crouching and leaping into the air, but rather than return to the floor, he simply continued to rise. He slowly spun himself around as he continued to float upwards until he landed with a crouch on the ceiling.

  


As he clung to the ceiling, he pressed a few more buttons on his arm, and with a muted blue flash, he suddenly felt the world flip upside down.

  


“Gravitational alignment set,” the robotic voice in his ear informed him as he shook his head free of vertigo. Standing up, he no longer felt like he was standing on the ceiling. It felt like he was standing on the floor, which now just so happened to be the ceiling.

  


Ahead of him, the “floor” sloped upwards in a smooth incline, and one that was completely free of pressure-sensitive plating. To top it off, while this area was still covered with some of the motion-sensitive lasers starting just a few feet in front of him, they weren’t quite as dense as they were near the stairs.

  


And so began the agility portion of this particular burglary.

  


Slowly, and with painstaking care, he began to weave his way between the narrow beams of light. He shimmied along the floor/ceiling, and he bent under criss-crossing beams near his face. Once, he even had to dive between a network of crossing lines because there were no paths anywhere else, and he had to land in a handstand on the other side, mere hairsbreadths from yet another network of lasers. Thankfully, his gravity rig didn’t set things to the same level as normal gravity, so he felt lighter and he was pulled back to the ceiling a bit more slowly, but that was a double-edged sword, since it also meant he could very easily overshoot a jump and strike the beams of light above him, tripping the alarm and thoroughly ruining his day. Fortunately, he had more than a bit of practice in both the gymnastics required to make it through a field like this and in managing the decreased gravity, so he was able to avoid this rather embarrassing fate.

  


Honestly, one of the biggest difficulties rested in the fact that the ground sloped upwards from his perspective, and without steps or any real design with traction in mind (since people weren’t expected to be walking on the bloody ceiling), it took constant extreme effort to not only contort himself into insane and unnatural shapes as he snaked his way through the lasers, but to do all this without losing his balance and falling back “downhill,” and without losing his footing and slipping on the smooth floor that definitely was not made to be anything but a ceiling, either.

  


_You know, this would have been so much easier if I’d just been able to reach the sloped part of the ceiling before triggering the gravity realignment,_ he complained to himself as he was forced to balance on fingertip and toetips to crawl through a hole in the lasers in a maneuver that was made _waaay_ more difficult than it needed to be just because he was moving uphill on a smooth surface. _But nooooo! The stupid lasers just_ had _to begin before the freaking ceiling angled downwards._

  


He mopped his forehead free of sweat as he paused while straddling several lasers.

  


_I should file a complaint or something_ , he considered as he got back to his exhausting task.

  


However, as he bent himself in a way that human beings most certainly were not meant to bend while shimmying through a spiderweb of lasers, he suddenly felt his stomach drop all the way to his feet upon hearing one tiny, innocent sound:

  


The beeping of his watch informing him he had 30 seconds of power left before his gravity rig failed.

  


He felt the blood drain from his face as he stared ahead at the stretch of ceiling he still had to cover, and then up at the dense network of lasers beneath/above him, on the other side of which were the pressure plates.

  


Throwing caution to the wind, he began moving. He ducked, weaved, slid, and dove through the lasers with none of his previous slow caution. He couldn’t afford caution any longer. If he didn’t make it out in time, he was fucked, pure and simple.

  


His heart pounded a tattoo on the inside of his rib-cage as he constantly made little mistakes, like his foot slipping slightly on the smooth floor, or his arm wavering as he balanced on his hands, as he was moving too fast to maintain perfect balance, constantly bringing him so close to the lasers he worried they’d be triggered by the sweat gathering on the parts of his skin that were exposed, but he didn’t slow down.

  


Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the blue light of his gravity rig flicker slightly, and he felt the accompanying (and terrifying) brief moment of vertigo as it did so, and somehow, he redoubled his pace as he snaked his way through the lasers.

  


_Almost there_ , he desperately encouraged himself as he came up on the final array of lasers, open air so close he could practically taste it.

  


In a heart-stopping moment, though, he felt his gravity rig flicker once more, and somehow, he knew it was about to fail.

  


He wouldn’t have time to make it through the final lasers.

  


Time seemed to halt as he turned his gaze from the lasers in front of him to those above him, and soon to be below, desperate for a way out. His eyes narrowed as he spotted a path through the lasers where the crossing beams formed almost a tunnel of clear space stretching from just in front of him towards the ground in front of the steps.

  


A very, _very_ narrow tunnel, and one that started with a curve in front of him, making it a completely impossible shot.

  


So he went for it.

  


Trusting his instincts, despite all evidence that doing so was a terrible idea, he leaped forward and up through the first part of the tunnel. His lungs froze in his chest as he approached the peak of his jump and slowed, sure he was about to be pulled back to the ceiling, and into the lasers between him and it. However, just before he stalled completely and began his downward descent, downward became upward as the gravity rig failed completely.

  


Suddenly, the room spun in his eyes as his floor returned to being the ceiling, and the ground was once again the floor.

  


And he fell.

  


His heart felt like it stopped as he raced between the lasers, so close he could practically _feel_ them as he flew down and slightly forwards towards the foot of the stairs. He narrowed his body into one thin spike as he slipped through the tunnel, sure that he would crash into both the lasers and the final pressure plate at the foot of the stairs.

  


But he didn’t.

  


His falling form passed through the opening in front of the stairs, and he slammed painfully into the ground, bouncing and sliding on the completely unforgiving concrete before finally coming to an agonizing stop.

  


For several minutes, he simply lay there groaning and panting in a potent combination of exhaustion and sheer pain. Eventually, however, he tilted his head upwards and looked behind him at the staircase, and the completely untouched security system surrounding it.

  


“Nailed it,” he boasted to himself before cutting off in a groan as his body was wracked with another stab of pain. Slowly climbing to his feet, he stood in a hunched-over stance and just stared at the network of lasers behind him.

  


“I’m getting too old for this shit,” the child complained as he turned and hobbled away like a broken old man.

  


As he did, he took in the sight of the massive steel vault door in front of him, and the numerous security measures set up to keep it rather rudely locked.

  


“Geez. Where is the trust these days?” he muttered to himself with a grin as he began unloading his bag of thieving goodies and returning them to their slots on his outfit.

  


So equipped, he stepped up and studied the vault door.

  


“Oh look. Yet another mark who set up their vault door as part of a circuit. Whoopee.” He shook his head as he looked on in a mixture of annoyance and pride at what was clearly an anti-Spectre intrusion measure. Basically, the entire door, and the wall around it, was set up so that if it were to, say, be disintegrated as numerous other vault doors had been in cities he just so happened to have visited, then the circuit would be broken and the alarm triggered.

  


“One would almost think some rich people were getting rather upset with me breaking in and stealing their stuff,” he observed with a laugh. And while logically, he knew that it wasn’t a good thing that he, and his methods, were now becoming infamous in certain circles, he had to admit that he felt a certain swell of pride in the fact that his reputation was proceeding him to the extent that people he had never even robbed before were now designing systems for the express purpose of saying “No Spectres allowed.”

 

It was kind of flattering, to be honest.

  


Still pointless in the end, though. Especially since he hadn’t planned on blowing the vault door in the first place. That was simply the easiest way to get in. Not the funnest.

  


And so, he stepped up to the wall beneath one of the security panels and studied the wires he could see inside it.

  


“Hmm. Smart,” he muttered to himself as he started piecing together how the security system worked. As he expected, the unreasonably secured door required DNA verification, iris identification, a voice check, a spoken password, and a typed code, the latter two of which he did not have. As the icing on the cake, the entire door was locked down with an electromagnetic seal that was controlled by the security office, and was of course yet another security measure that had to be released simultaneously with the other locks being disengaged at the door itself.

  


He sighed. “It’s so sad to see people putting this much effort into something, only for it all to be for nothing.”

  


Snickering under his breath, he pulled out a short coil of thin black cable made of what looked like a combination of metal and cloth, and he attached one end to a slot in his belt, while the other, he connected to a small magnetic rail gun attachment on one of his forearms. This was fairly low-powered as rail guns went, but it was more than enough for his purposes.

  


Looking up at the ceiling, he identified the camera overlooking the vault, and carefully aiming, he fired at the ceiling next to it, sending a small attachment impacting the concrete ceiling behind the rotating camera’s current blindspot, with the apparently elastic black cord trailing after it. Disconnecting the cord from the arm attachment, he turned the round attachment the cord connected to at his belt, and with a gentle hum, the cord began shortening, pulling him to the ceiling.

  


This cord was made of an exceptionally handy material he had developed that expanded and extended when exposed to a positive current, but shortened and condensed when part of a negative current, such as one created with a small generator built into the attachment on the other end of the cord. This made the material extremely useful as a grappling hook, among other uses.

  


As he reached the camera, he turned the connection point once more, hearing it click into position as the cord stopped retracting, leaving him dangling several meters off the floor as he got to work neutralizing the camera. While it wouldn’t see _him_ with his field active, it would be able to see some of the work he was doing to the vault, and that, he couldn’t have.

  


After quickly scanning the room from just below the camera, he pulled out a cassette-player sized device that he attached to the ceiling behind the camera, and clipping a narrow ring around the base of the black bubble, he activated the system, projecting an image of the room exactly as it was at that moment over the glass around the camera, thus blinding the camera inside the bubble to what was actually happening outside the glass. As a plus, since the bubble was so small, the battery in the device would last quite a while, hopefully long enough for him to break into the vault.

  


With the camera neutralized, he turned the connection point at his belt the other direction, and with another hum, the cord extended, swiftly lowering him to the floor.

  


Once there, he pressed another button on the connection point, deactivating the attachment holding the other end against the ceiling, and with a quiet pop, it disconnected, with the cord rapidly shortening and condensing as it fell.

  


Coiling the cord and storing it away, he finally got to work on the vault itself.

  


Taking out a fist-sized silver sphere, he placed it against the wall next to the vault door and ever so carefully traced a square across the concrete wall before setting the sphere aside. Placing his glove against the center of the square, he slowly and gently pulled his hand back, removing a block of the wall that was very carefully sized and shaped to avoid breaking the aforementioned circuits and tripping the alarm. Setting the block aside, he looked into the hole at the wires he could now not only see, but actually work with.

  


From that point forward, he had to utilize a number of his more delicate tools as he reached in and began splicing and connecting and disconnecting various wires, while others he deliberately shorted out or overloaded.

  


Several minutes later, he had several cords trailing out of the wall leading to a tablet. After much typing, data crunching, and cursing, he managed to set the tablet up to bypass the code and trigger the locks connected to it, though he didn’t activate it just yet.

  


After all, he still had to deal with the electromagnetic seal.

  


For that, he studied the vault door carefully, and after a great deal of calculation, he took out a marker and placed a series of “X”s at various points orbiting the massive round door, at times needing to use his cord to raise him off the ground enough to reach them. Taking up the silver sphere once more, he carefully carved out notches at each “X”, each a very specific depth and diameter. From there, he unclipped the magnetic generator from his lower back and set it on the ground before pulling out a series of wires and other bits and bobs from his pack. At that point, he began hooking up a series of relays to transmit the magnetic pulse along the wires, terminating in nodes he hooked up and placed in the notches carved into the wall surrounding the door at the points he had calculated.

  


Connecting the wires to one larger cable, he placed the magnetic generator near the tablet and hooked it up to the cable, with both it and the tablet now placed near the DNA, voice, and iris scanners.

  


As the final step, he gently broke his way into the voice scanner, as there was one function he needed to bypass. Namely, the audio password. While he could pass its voice identification function, he didn’t have the password, so he needed to work on separating these two functions.

  


This proved to be far easier said than done. Whoever had done the setup and programming of the system clearly knew what they were doing. Both of the functions were integrally tied at numerous junctures. However, they still couldn’t avoid the fact that they _were_ still two functions, with the system comparing the audio sample against its records to verify that it matched the voice print of the person authorized to access the vault while another process compared the words and numbers identified in the audio sample against another database to identify it as the correct password, which he was willing to bet changed regularly.

  


Because of this, he was eventually, albeit after an annoyingly long and frustrating series of attempts, able to separate the two functions and connect the password-checking process to the same tablet that he set up to bypass the typed code.

  


“Seriously. A password _and_ a code? At some point, this just starts being overkill,” he muttered with a grin as he finished setting up the system to bypass both.

  


Finally, all that was left was setting up his disguise. However, that required charging the replacement battery for the system. And so, he reached into his bag and removed a large energy housing unit, which he attached to a slot in his chestplate. Once it was fully in place and its connections were checked, he closed his eyes.

  


Over the years, he had learned a number of tricks to help utilize his connection to the creature inside. He couldn’t control it, by any means, and he couldn’t always stop it from busting out in response to _extreme_ emotion or circumstance, especially those involving physical danger to his person or some other form of aggression, or even sometimes just when the creature decided it was tired of being locked away and wanted some fresh air and wanton destruction, and he wasn’t prepared or strong enough to counter it. However, he had picked up a number of ways to manage it to some degree or other, such as how to keep it from being triggered by more comparatively “safe” forms of stress, such as what he experienced in the laser field, as there was no physical opponent threatening him, allowing him to divorce that form of stress from that which would trigger the creature’s appearance. A fairly important development for someone working in a high-stress job like his own, that.

  


More importantly, though, he had also learned to call the creature up when he needed to.

  


And that’s what he did.

  


Reaching deep down inside, he slowly dragged the thrashing, snarling creature to the surface, like pulling a rabid animal up a well with a bucket and pulley.

  


“Come on, boy. Come and get it,” he prompted, whistling like he was calling a dog as the creature came closer and closer, tempted by the chance to break free.

  


However, just as he felt his skin start to sizzle from the energy of the creature, and just before his form started to shift and change, he activated the energy containment system.

  


The creature howled in rage and frustration as its strength was bled from it and funneled into the battery.

  


“Yeah yeah yeah, tell it to PETA,” he told it, gritting his teeth and sweating as he fought to hold the creature at just the right level while also forcing what energy he could seize control of into the collection unit.

  


As the system beeped to alert him that it was at capacity, he redoubled his efforts, not towards keeping the creature there, but into forcing it back down.

  


Thankfully, by bleeding its energy away as he’d done, the creature was weakened and couldn’t put up as much of a fight as it could otherwise.

  


Unfortunately, the creature seemed to have been getting stronger over the years as well.

  


Things came harrowingly close to a stalemate as he fought with the beast, but eventually, and with much growling and snarling from both of them, the creature was wrestled back into its shadowy home.

  


Gasping, he collapsed to his knees as he returned to the outside world, mopping his sweating forehead once more as he stared down at the brightly glowing energy core.

  


_It’s not enough_ , he realized with concern.

  


Not for this job, no. It was more than enough to power his tech long enough to finish the heist. But the creature was getting stronger faster than he could improve his designs for the power cells. His first designs had been enough to practically put the creature to sleep when he was through leaching off as much energy as they could take. Now, those first batteries would barely make a dent in the creature’s vast stores of power, and even these more advanced versions, which could trap magnitudes more energy than the first ones, could barely weaken it enough to keep it from busting free when he was done.

  


“Nothing’s ever simple, is it?” he asked of no-one, grimacing and clamoring to his feet to finish the job, part of his mind on how he could rework the designs to trap more energy.

  


With a series of clicks, he twisted the glowing power core in its a slot on his chest-piece, sending energy racing from the larger energy core into various batteries housed in the other devices attached to his suit, including the new one he had attached to his holographic image projector to replace the old one that had completely burnt out after being depleted.

  


The air crackled around him as they were charged and the power core lost some of its brilliance, but not much. When they were done, he unsnapped the power core from its slot and returned it to his bag to be distributed among more of his tech later.

  


“Well, I think this has taken long enough,” he decided with an eager smile as he looked on at the soon-to-be-open vault door. “It’s showtime!”

  


Walking over towards the scanners, he activated his image projector, causing the air around him to flicker and jump like a static-y picture in an old TV before an image of the host of the party upstairs appeared around him, looking for all the world as if the man was actually standing there instead of him as its image was projected off of various pieces of his armor, making an actually fluid and movable image that appeared completely real and natural.

  


“Testing, testing,” he said, hearing the host’s voice coming out of his mask rather than his own mechanically distorted one. “Perfect,” he proclaimed, the man’s face breaking out into a child-like grin of excitement.

  


Finally, it was the moment of truth. Stepping up to the scanners, he got into position and triggered the system.

  


“I am an enormous tool,” he said clearly into the voice scanner, using the only phrase that seemed to suit his stolen face as the iris scanner began checking the hologram’s eye. Thankfully, he had designed the image projector with this in mind, so he wasn’t worried about that.

  


The fact that he left the tablet on the floor was a bit of a problem, though, especially since he couldn’t reach down and grab it with the iris scanner active.

  


“Come on, man, aren’t you supposed to be smart?” he asked himself in exasperation as he reached out as far as he could with his foot to reach the tablet before gracelessly smacking it a few times to trigger the processes to bypass the code and passphrase systems.

  


As the iris scanner gave him an affirmative beep, he placed his gloved right hand into another scanner to verify his DNA. Fortunately, this was a function his glove was designed to cover after it was provided a DNA sample, such as one gained from skin cells taken when shaking someone’s hand.

  


The scanner gave him an affirmative beep at almost the same time as his tablet, leaving only one barrier remaining.

  


The electromagnetic seal.

  


“You know, I could have sworn I had a line ready for this,” he complained as he pulled out a remote for the magnetic generator. “Um … give me my money, bitch!” he called out lamely as he pushed the button.

  


The generator activated with a hum, and the room was suddenly filled with the sound of slamming metal as the magnetic nodes placed around the door disrupted the seal and allowed the final locks to disengage.

  


The massive metal door emitted a low, echoing boom as it slowly swung open.

  


Eyes shining, he stepped away from the scanners and into the doorway, allowing a big, dumb grin to light up his latest victim’s holographic face as he beheld the sweet, glorious loot held inside.

  


“I love my job,” he breathed as he stepped inside, dropping his disguise.

  


He gently traced his hand over a stack of money larger than what was held in most banks as he stared around in delighted awe, certain that some heavenly choir would soon come down to provide a musical accompaniment for this very moment.

  


“Chalk up another paranoid rich bastard who doesn’t trust banks or computers, no matter how much he likes talking about technology,” he observed as he breathed in the scent of a ludicrous amount of money for someone to keep in their home. “Still, I’m certainly not going to complain. With cash like this, we might actually be able to make some progress in our tiny little problem,” he muttered thoughtfully.

  


Over in one corner was also an assortment of paintings, which he hazarded a guess were worth a fair penny. However, it was the assortment of pieces of technology laid out on tables behind the mountain of cash that he found himself drawn to.

  


“You know, I’m almost sad that the group upstairs probably won’t be getting their bonus, now,” he mused as he looked over some of the tech he found. “They definitely deserve it, and the other groups too, probably.”

  


_Oh well_ , he thought with a grin as he moved to one piece in particular.

  


“Well hello again,” he greeted the seemingly innocuous device. “Have they been doing a good job taking care of you?” He lifted the device and held it in his arms like a baby. “Oh, there there. It’s okay. Daddy’s got you.”

  


With a smirk, he deactivated the homing beacon pointing him towards the device.

  


“You know, Mr. Killian, you really should be more careful with what you pick up on the black market,” he said aloud, chuckling all the while. “After all, you have no idea where it’s been.”

  


Pulling out a smartphone, he pulled up a map of the world, which was currently blinking with three more blips.

  


“But at least you’re not alone in that mistake,” he observed with a wicked grin.

  


Two days later, when Aldrich Killian tried to enter the stairway to visit his vault and found that the security office couldn’t shut down the systems they were supposed to, the lush mansion exploded in a flurry of activity as security workers and engineers tried to remotely deactivate the defenses in the hallway.

  


Hours later, as they all raced down the finally deactivated stairway, they came to a vault room that looked completely untouched, with the vault door securely shut and the wall around it apparently untouched.

  


However, yet again, the security office found itself unable to remotely shut down the systems they were connected to, forcing them to spend still more hours breaking through.

  


Almost a day later, the door finally swung open, only to reveal a completely empty vault. There was no money, no paintings, and no tech. All they could find was a wide burn mark on the ground.

  


“ _Spectre_ ,” Aldrich Killian hissed, his eyes glowing with rage.

  


* * *

  


**Present day**

  


“Oh, you’re full of it!” Tony exclaimed from next to him at the table, tools in hand as he worked with him to repair some of his tech.

  


“Swear to God! His eyes literally glowed with rage!” the boy insisted with a grin as he worked on another device.

  


“And how would you even know that?” Tony asked, smirking victoriously as he poked a hole in the kid’s story.

  


“I was there,” he informed him with a smug look of his own, to which Tony replied with a confused and disbelieving look. “Hello, holographic disguises? You think I _wasn’t_ impersonating one of the nameless security guards when they opened that vault?”

  


Tony blinked at him in bemused confusion. “But why?”

  


“Are you kidding me? Seeing their faces when they figure out what I did is practically the best part of the job!” he insisted with glee, lifting up what looked like a futuristic headband as he checked the connections he had just restored.

  


“That seems pretty stupid,” Tony observed.

  


“Well, going by what I saw of you on the roof, I guess you’d know. Stupid seems to be your forte,” he replied, tightening one of the screws in the band.

  


“Now that’s just uncalled for,” Tony replied as he continued working on a device.

  


“Yeah yeah. Here, put this on,” the kid responded, handing him the headband.

  


“Why? What’s it do?” Tony asked as he looked the device over.

  


“It lets you shoot deathbeams out of your eyes,” the kid replied matter-of-factly.

  


“Really?!” Tony asked in excitement.

  


“No,” he answered, reaching up to tighten another one of the connections as he settled it down over Tony’s temples like a narrow crown.

  


“You know, it’s not nice to toy with people’s hopes and dreams like that,” Tony complained as he finished adjusting the headband. “By the way, what are you doing with all that money you steal?” Tony asked suddenly. “I mean, all of it can’t be going into this crappy tech.”

  


He gave the man an offended look. “Hey, this crappy tech saved your ass a few hours ago.”

  


“I didn’t say it wasn’t _useful_ crappy tech,” Tony countered. “But seriously, if your story’s true, then you’ve been getting your hands on some serious cash. Where’s it all going? Really big TVs? Videogames? Maybe a few autographed seasons of the Teletubbies?”

  


“I have expenses,” he answered vaguely, situating the device more properly on Tony’s head.

  


However, before Tony could complain about the lack of an answer, they were both distracted by the sound of crunching glass as a slender woman with strawberry-blonde hair and a frazzled expression walked through the shattered glass door at the other end of the room.

  


“There you are!” she exclaimed in clear relief at spotting Tony. “I’ve been looking for you all over! You weren’t in your room, you weren’t in the hospital—where you clearly should be!—and you aren’t answering the inter–…” The woman stopped short at spotting him next to Tony. “Uh … who is this?”

  


“This is … um …,” Tony trailed off as well upon realizing he had never asked for his name. “Hey kid, you got a name?” he asked, turning to him.

  


He raised an eyebrow. “How would I not have a name?”

  


“I don’t know. You were living on the streets. Maybe you came from an abusive household or something that was so bad you were never given a name. It could happen,” Tony defended.

  


He snorted. “Yes, and I can see that you’re approaching this subject with all of your trademark sensitivity and compassion,” the boy observed. “Seriously. You should be a therapist.”

  


“Alright, clearly he’s stalling because he doesn’t have a name,” Tony decided, turning back to the woman. “I think I’ll name him ‘Sparky’.”

  


Narrowing his eyes, the kid grabbed a battered device from the table. Turning it on, he pressed the sparking end into Tony’s side, resulting in the man yelping and dancing away from the improvised taser.

  


“Just living up to my new name,” he responded innocently to the man’s indignant glare.

  


The poor woman standing next to them didn’t quite seem to know how to respond to any of this. However, shaking her head, she cleared her throat and extended her hand out to him politely. “Hello. My name is Pepper Potts.”

  


“It’s nice to meet you, Pepper Potts,” he replied, shaking her hand. “My name is Harry.”

  


“And how did you get here, Harry?” she asked curiously.

  


“Harry here,” Tony chimed in, “is a poor little orphan boy I found huddled in the wreckage of Stark labs after the fight with Stane.”

  


Harry narrowed his eyes at the “poor little orphan boy” comment, the device in his hand sparking threateningly.

  


Tony stepped lively to the other side of Pepper upon spotting it.

  


“Wait, you just found some little boy and took him?” Pepper asked in alarm, not even noticing said little boy’s deeply offended look at her term for him.

  


“Well, I had to, Pepper. He was just lying there all cold and hungry. What was I gonna do, turn a lost, homeless six-year-old back out onto the streets? Shame on you!”

  


“I’m twelve, grandpa,” Harry interrupted.

  


Tony gestured towards him. “See? He’s clearly delusional from cold and hunger! What kind of monster would I be to just leave him out there?”

  


Pepper seemed even more flustered as she tried to respond. “But I– … you– … you can’t just … take a kid!”

  


“Why not?” Tony asked. “So long as I remember to walk him, and feed him, and give him a clean dish of water …”

  


“A human child is not a pet, Tony!” Pepper butted in. “And you don’t even know the first thing about taking care of an animal, let alone a person!”

  


“Well that’s just not true. Remember when I had that goldfish that one time?” Tony countered

  


“No, _I_ had a goldfish, and _you_ still somehow managed to kill it,” Pepper pointed out.

  


“Oh, right.”

  


“You know what, we’re getting off topic. The point is, there are laws about this kind of thing. What if he has a family out there? You could be charged with kidnapping!”

  


“Oh yeah, I should definitely sue you for this,” Harry blandly remarked as he worked on another piece of tech, having returned to the table during their conversation. “Prepare to hear from my lawyer.”

  


“Oh, bring it on, _ghost boy_ ,” Tony challenged.

  


At that point, Pepper seemed to notice the silver headband around Tony’s temples for the first time. “What is that thing you’re wearing?”

  


“Hmm?” He raised a hand to touch the headband he had completely forgotten he was wearing. “Oh, right– …”

  


“Do not remove the headband,” Harry calmly interrupted before he could take it off.

  


“What? Why?” Tony asked.

  


“It’s calibrating,” Harry answered, still working on another device.

  


“Wait, what is all this?” Pepper asked upon finally spotting the table full of broken devices. “Where’d it all come from?”

  


“You like it?” Tony asked with a grin before stepping over and clasping Harry’s shoulders. “Harry here made it all by himself!”

  


“Can you make it sound any more like you’re praising a five-year-old’s macaroni art?” he complained with a glare at the man behind him.

  


“Dawww, they’re so cute when they’re that age!” Tony exclaimed, tousling his messy black hair, though being sure to quickly step away when Harry reached for the sparking device once more.

  


“What is that?” Pepper asked quietly at spotting something under his bangs.

  


“A scar,” he answered, knowing she was looking at the lightning-bolt branded onto his forehead. “I don’t know where I got it.”

  


“Wait, what scar?” Tony asked before moving in front of him and staring at the mark on his forehead. “Huh.”

  


“You’ve been looking me in the face for hours, and you’re just noticing the thing now?” Harry asked in amusement. “Observant.”

  


“Harry,” Pepper began gently, interrupting another brewing banter session, “where’s your family? We need to get you back to them.”

  


“Considering they’re dead, I should probably take that as a threat,” he blithely responded.

  


Pepper’s jaw dropped in shock at the bluntness of his answer, but Tony picked up the slack for the speechless woman.

  


“See? I told you he was a little orphan boy!”

  


Harry narrowed his eyes challengingly as he activated the sparking device once more. “Call me that again, Captain Goatee. See what happens.”

  


“Alright, everyone just– …” Pepper took a deep breath, clearly trying to center herself. “There are still laws with things like this,” she said to Tony. “We can’t just take him in just like that.”

  


“Fine. I’ll get out of your hair,” Harry said simply, causing them both to look at him in surprise. “What? I didn’t come here begging for a place to stay. I was willing to consider staying for a little while because of … reasons,” he trailed off and glanced at Tony’s glowing arc reactor chest-piece, “but I’ve been doing just fine on my own for quite some time now. I’m good.”

  


“What? No no no, I’m not saying you should _leave_ ,” Pepper backtracked, holding up her hands as if he would try and leave that very moment. “I just mean that we need to do this right. That means lawyers, social services, and if you’re going to be staying here for any length of time, probably …,” she paused and looked at Tony, “… adoption.”

  


Two equally horrified gasps echoed this announcement.

  


“Well, you’re a public figure, Tony,” Pepper pointed out, “You can’t just keep a child in your home without people noticing. And when the authorities find out he’s here, they’ll either demand that he go to his guardians, or, assuming he has none, insist that you become one. And that likely means adoption.”

  


Harry blinked as he looked at the dumb-founded man-child.

  


“But I’m too young to be a father!” Harry complained.

  


“Hey!” Tony complained, likely more at Pepper’s thoughtful and understanding nod than the remark itself.

  


“Look, don’t take it from me. Why don’t you ask SHIELD, Tony?” Pepper suggested, not noticing how Harry tensed at the mention of the organization. “Agent Coulson is wanting to talk to you anyway before the press conference later this morning. Maybe he can help get the ball rolling on whatever hoops you need to jump through.”

  


“Whoa whoa whoa, everybody just time out!” Harry interrupted in more than a little alarmed. “I did _not_ agree to anybody adopting anyone! I thought I’d just be staying here for a few days while I study Tony’s reactor!”

  


Pepper looked confused. “Wait, why are you studyi–”

  


“It’s complicated,” Harry interrupted her question. “The point is, I did not come here looking for any of that. I’ve been fine on my own for years, and I absolutely do not need lawyers and Social Service workers and teachers and who knows what else all over my case now. Thank you, but no thank you. Absolutely not.”

  


Pepper looked saddened and concerned at his response, but it was Tony, and the thoughtful look on his face, that made Harry truly nervous.

  


“Hey, can you give us a minute?” Tony asked Pepper, an uncharacteristically serious look on his face. Pepper looked as surprised to see it as he was, but her expression changed as she gave him a slow, almost encouraging nod and left the room, crunching on the glass again as she made her way out the busted door.

  


“Look, Tony,” Harry began immediately, “I appreciate letting me kip here, and letting me use your tools to fix some of my stuff, but this is all _waaay_ more than I agreed to. I just wanted to check out the designs for the arc reactor and see if I could modify it to help control my dusty little problem.”

  


“And then what?” Tony asked, again, more seriously than Harry really knew how to respond to. “Even if I just give you the designs, and even if you can somehow build it yourself, what then? You just go back to your little game of high-stakes cops and robbers?”

  


“It’s worked for me so far,” he answered with a shrug.

  


“Yeah, ‘so far’,” Tony countered. “But what happens when that changes? What happens if a guard with more bullets than sense stumbles across you one day when you’re doing what you do? What happens when—not if, _when—_ the feds finally catch up to you? This whole things stops being a game real damn quick, and suddenly, you’re in a concrete box getting to know guys named Brick and Tank while the most complicated tech you get to work with again is the prison laundry machines.” He shrugged. “Gotta say, not the best retirement package.”

  


Harry looked away, not really able to come up with a response to that.

  


“Look,” Tony continued, leaning on the edge of the table next to him, “I’m not suggesting we huddle around a campfire singing Kumbaya, and I’m not talking about fishing trips wearing matching outfits. And I swear to god, I hear one word about a father-son dance, I’m putting you in a cardboard box and dropping you off at a damn orphanage myself.” Harry couldn’t help but snort in amusement at that particular image. “But I guess …,” Tony trailed off, clearly struggling to find his words before just gesturing at the room around them. “Look at all this stuff. This place is Candyland for someone like you and me. I’ve got tech. I’ve got money. I’ve got a big-ass house. I’ve got a company so that if you come up with some tech you want to sell, it can get put into production and maybe even make you some money that you don’t have to worry about containing exploding dye packs.”

  


Harry laughed and shook his head, but then looked at the unusually somber man. “Are you saying you want me to be your son?” he asked in a teasing voice.

  


“Hell no!” Tony insisted. “You heard what I did to Pepper’s goldfish. Considering she doesn’t even live here, that says a lot about my nurturing capabilities. And hell, I can’t even take care of myself without Jarvis and Pepper there. But hey, you don’t seem like you’ll be needing me to wipe your nose or play coach for your Little League Softball team, and if you do, there’s always Pepper for that.”

  


Harry snorted. “I can already see that that poor woman’s gonna need a raise,” he observed with a grin.

  


“You’re not kidding,” Tony agreed before registering the meaning behind what he said. “Wait, you mean you’re considering it?”

  


Harry paused, really giving it some thought.

  


To be honest, Tony was probably right in what he said about his current vocation. It really was just a matter of time before he pulled a short straw and got pinched. If he was lucky, it would be by the cops. If he wasn’t … well, he’d gotten a taste for how upset certain people were with his practices through the increasingly elaborate and specialized security systems he’d been dealing with over the years. He did _not_ need a more personal meeting to get the picture.

  


And honestly? A place like this was really the best-case scenario for someone like him. Not only did he gain access to Stark resources like money and equipment, but he also gained access to Tony himself, someone whose brain he could pick and bounce ideas off of, maybe even learn a thing or two from.

  


Add in his need to study the arc reactor, the only known expert in which was sitting right next to him …

  


“I … might be willing to consider it,” he answered, hedging his words, “but we would definitely need to set up some ground rules.”

  


“Such as?” Tony asked curiously.

  


“Well, first and foremost, you never sell me down the river to the feds,” he stated.

  


“Hmm,” Tony responded looking thoughtful. “What if you _really_ piss me off? Like you stay out past curfew or something, or you, I don’t know, use something from Hammer Industries?”

  


“Well, I have working brain cells, so I really don’t think we’re in any danger of the latter,” he pointed out, causing Tony to grin.

  


“Alright, agreed. No selling you out to the feds,” Tony accepted.

  


“And I don’t want to hear anything about you trying to send me off to school or something,” Harry listed next. “That will _definitely_ not end well for anyone. Mostly you.”

  


“Well, I think the feds might have a word or two to say to me if you don’t get _any_ schooling,” Tony pointed out. “But don’t worry; I won’t send you to some school.” He grinned. “You’ll be getting the Stark Specialized Schooling experience! I’m sure Jarvis could do a decent job as a home-school teacher.”

  


“Will I be able to give detentions, sir?” Jarvis joined the conversation.

  


“Obviously,” Tony agreed.

  


Harry gave him a thoroughly unimpressed look.

  


“Hey, this won’t be just ‘When did the pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock’ kind of stuff. We’re talking computer programming, engineering, physics, chemistry …,” he gestured towards his table of tech. “I think you’ll find it more than a bit useful.”

  


“Fine,” Harry agreed reluctantly. “I’ll agree to a trial run of your home-schooling.”

  


“You’ll have to call your teacher ‘Mr. Jarvis’, of course,” Tony pointed out.

  


“I quite like the sound of that, actually,” Jarvis said.

  


“Yeah, that will definitely not be happening,” Harry rebutted.

  


“Kids these days. So disrespectful,” Tony complained in disappointment. “Anything else?”

  


“Yeah, no tear-filled hugs or deeply emotional moments you might see in a soap opera or something. That’ll just be embarrassing,” he completed his list.

  


“Agreed,” Tony said with a shudder at the thought. “Alright, my turn.”

  


“Shoot.”

  


“Alright, rule number one: No throwing a tantrum and storming out of the room like a cliched teenager. You get pissed at someone in _my_ house, you find something witty and devastating to say to make _them_ leave, or you can just pack your bags right now.”

  


“Seems reasonable,” Harry agreed.

  


“Good. Rule number two: No Sesame Street in this house. Ever.”

  


“Exactly how old do you think I am?”

  


“Rule number three: No asking to fly in the Iron Man suit. It’s mine. You want one, you build your own.”

  


“I think advising a minor to do anything of the sort is questionable as parenting moves go, but fine, agreed.”

  


“Good. Rule number four: No stealing.”

  


Harry paused to think before answering. “What if I see something that someone has, and I really really want it?”

  


“You offer the person who owns it an obscene amount of money for it and buy it like a reasonable adult,” Tony replied matter-of-factly.

  


“Well that sounds boring,” Harry complained. “But fine.” He rummaged in his pocket. “Oh, and here, I guess.” He handed Tony an ornate leather wallet, prompting Tony to suddenly grab his apparently empty back pocket before taking the wallet with a bemused glare. “What? It’s habit.”

  


“Uh-huh,” Tony replied with an amused and suspicious look. “So, we agreed?”

  


“I guess we are,” Harry affirmed, reaching out and shaking Tony’s hand.

  


“Good,” Tony said. “Glad to have you aboard. So, any legal guardians we need to worry about?”

  


“Definitely not,” Harry assured him. “In fact, I’m probably not going to show up in any of the government’s systems at all.”

  


“Why? Because you’re from England?” Tony asked.

  


“… Something like that,” Harry answered.

  


“That’s fine. I’m sure SHIELD can set you up with an identity too,” Tony assured him as he got up and headed toward the door after Pepper, not noticing Harry’s ironic snort at the statement.

  


“Oh, I guess you can take the headband off now,” Harry told him.

  


“Hmm?” Tony reached up and pulled off the headband he had forgotten he had been wearing yet again. “What’s it do, anyway?” he asked as Harry took it from him and placed in back on the table.

  


“Wipes memories,” Harry blandly answered as he joined Tony in walking towards the door.

  


Tony laughed, but froze as he realized he might not have been kidding. “Wait, seriously?!”

  


“What, you think someone in my line of work was just going to spill his life’s story to an absolute stranger without having some kind of fail-safe? What if you wanted to turn me in? I needed to be able to do _something_ ,” Harry pointed out with a bemused look.

  


“You were going to wipe my memory?!” Tony yelped in alarm.

  


“You were going to _what_?!” Pepper’s voice sounded from just above the door, where she had apparently been listening in.

  


“It would only have taken a couple days’ worth,” he defended. “And the chance of it causing long-term damage is pretty low. And with you, I doubt anyone would have been able to tell even if it did, honestly.”

  


“I can’t believe you were going to wipe my memory!” Tony repeated, apparently rather hung up on this.

  


“Hey, there’s no need to be a pussy about it,” Harry said with a grin as he echoed Tony’s words from earlier.

  


Tony’s mouth opened and closed silently for a moment before fixing him with a stare that was indignant, but also more than a little amused.

  


“You know, I think we need to add a new rule to the list: No wiping memories.”

  


“Party pooper,” Harry maturely responded.


	4. Kids these days

**Undisclosed location**

  


A series of dark, dingy hallways echoed with the soft, quiet clink of dripping water, but this sound was soon drowned out by the stomp of booted footsteps and the scuff of dragged feet as two heavily armed but un-uniformed men dragged a bound and hooded figure between them.

  


Soon, the man’s captors came upon a door guarded by two more men armed and dressed much like themselves, and after exchanging a flurry of words in a tongue the hooded man didn’t speak, the heavy doors were opened with a groan of rusted hinges, and the man was dragged into the center of a room before being thrown to the damp stone floor.

  


Reflexively, the man tried to rise to his knees, but a heavy boot planted between his shoulder-blades forced him painfully back to the floor. However, before he could complain, he heard the click of a rifle being armed, and he remained silent.

  


For several moments, this silence extended to the entire room, as no-one, not captive nor captors, moved a muscle. However, despite being blinded by the hood being ground painfully into his cheek by the slimy stone floor, the man still felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise from some unseen, but disturbingly penetrating, gaze upon him.

  


After almost a minute, his straining ears finally caught the faint hint of rustling cloth, apparently from some gesture made by whatever person was in charge, because the prisoner’s escorts seized him by his upper arms and dragged him roughly to his knees before ripping the cloth sack off his head.

  


The man’s eyes burned from the sudden exposure to light after so long without, but thankfully, the room was dimly lit, so this faded quickly. Unfortunately, as he shook his head to sweep some of his chin-length hair out of his face, he realized this also meant he could see almost nothing of his captors.

  


However, as he studied the figure in front of him, he found himself feeling inexplicably grateful for this fact.

  


He was knelt before an ornate, ancient-looking wooden throne, which was partially shrouded in both darkness and the smoke of incense trailing from smoldering sticks placed in the mouths of stone dragons crouching on either side. Their faint red light was all that illuminated the figure in the throne, and all they allowed him to see were two heavily ringed, long-nailed hands slowly tapping on the arms of the throne.

  


The prisoner never said a word as he stared into the shadows where the seated figure’s face should be, neither demanding answers nor begging for freedom.

  


This apparently pleased the figure.

  


“You have learned the value of silence,” the figure observed, speaking in accented, overly enunciated English. A twitch of shadows might have been a grin. “This is good.” Those bejeweled, claw-like hands grasped the arms of the throne as the figure stood, revealing flowing, ornate green robes that shrouded his form just as the shadows masked his face. However, as the figure began to descend the short steps at the foot of his throne, the prisoner suddenly saw stars as one of his guards smashed the butt of his rifle into the back of his skull.

  


“ _Eyes down_ ,” the guard hissed over the ringing in the prisoner’s ears.

  


By the time the stone floor had stopped spinning and the splitting pain in his skull had receded to a sharp throb, along with the faint tickling sensation of blood running down the back of his neck, the robed figure had come to a halt in front of him. Rather than provoke the guard again, however, the prisoner kept his gaze on the ornate golden hem of the figure’s robes, even when the figure slowly bent until he could feel his moist breath on the nape of his neck, and smell the cloying mixture of sour sweat and incense that clung to him like perfume.

  


“Do you know why you are here?” the figure asked in a scintillating voice.

  


The prisoner shook his head, prompting the figure to lean closer.

  


“ _Knowledge_ ,” he hissed into his ear.

  


The figure straightened and began slowly gliding away as he continued speaking.

  


“Yes, _knowledge_ ,” the figure repeated, gently sliding his hand down the edge of what the prisoner could faintly make out as a table covered with hulking, shadowy shapes, though he was currently more interested in what he could make out about the figure now that his back was turned, but other than long, straight black hair, he couldn’t tell much.

  


“More powerful than any weapon, is knowledge,” the figure continued, still with his back turned. “Sweeter than the finest wine, more deadly than any poison. It can build empires, or fell kingdoms. With just a whisper, it can bring enlightenment … or madness.”

  


The figure began to turn, and as the prisoner heard the creaking of leather from his guard’s gloves on his rifle, he hastily dropped his gaze back to the floor.

  


“And you have knowledge that I need,” the robed man whispered as he stared down at the prisoner. With one barked command, one of the soldiers stepped forward from the shadows and threw down a cardboard box, spilling its contents all over the stone floor.

  


The prisoner recognized his notebooks and diagrams, apparently stolen from his home when the soldiers broke in and kidnapped him.

  


Most of all, though, he recognized one diagram in particular. While it wasn’t one he had made himself, he had spent more than a little time pouring over it in recent months as he tried to unlock the secrets it hinted at.

  


“Yes,” the robed man intoned as he spotted where his gaze was directed. “I see that you know what I am talking about.” He gently kicked that very diagram. Stepping in front of the prisoner, the figure dropped into a crouch once more, forcing the prisoner to stare almost straight down at the dank stone floor.

  


“You and I,” the man whispered, “have a common enemy.”

  


As the figure stood, the two guards seized the prisoner’s arms in a bruising grip and dragged him to his feet as well, forcing him after the figure as he glided back towards the shadowy table. With only the subtlest of gestures from the robed man, however, one of the guards threw a switch, and the entire table was lit with a harsh, buzzing light.

  


The prisoner’s eyes widened.

  


The table was filled with a few scraps of damaged, bullet-riddled red and gold armor sparsely filling in the outline of a man, and around them were hand-drawn diagrams of what looked like a crude mechanical suit. Nestled on top of these was a filthy, bulky black laptop, the screen of which was filled with lines of complex code, but overtop it all was a completed progress bar for a “Power sequence initialization.”

  


“It would seem that our mutual friend is less than diligent in cleaning up after himself,” the robed figure commented as he gently caressed the battered laptop. “He was once a guest of ours, you see. Though he parted ways in time, he left more than a few treasures behind in the process.” The figure nodded towards the diagrams. “My disciples were even able to recover his first suit. Though it was eventually stolen from us, the diagrams we were able to draw from it remain.”

  


The prisoner reached out with his bound hands and angled one of the diagrams so he could read it, his eyes gleaming with excitement as he did.

  


“So,” the figure said, stepping back and spreading his hands, “that is what I offer you: these gifts, and the chance to finally strike back at the name that has ruined your own. What say you?”

  


The prisoner didn’t hesitate as he turned from the table and raised his eyes to meet the robed man’s gaze for the first time. The man’s face glistened with stale sweat, and a prominent hooked nose gave his expression a severe, predatory cast, but the man’s eyes … they were black as night, and just as cold, no matter the smile on the man’s thin lips. They almost looked out of place on the man’s human face, seeming more at home on some great, feral beast than on a man.

  


The prisoner shivered as he met those alien black orbs. However, he still refused to look away, making the man’s lips twist into a pleased, if somewhat condescending expression, though his beast-like eyes remained unchanged, predatory and _hungry_.

  


“One condition,” the prisoner finally answered in a thick Russian accent.

  


The guards in the room tightened their grips on their weapons, but the robed man simply raised one long-nailed finger to halt them as he gestured for his guest to continue.

  


The prisoner’s grin bared metal-capped teeth. “I want my bird,” Ivan Vanko told them.

  


* * *

  


**Four years later**

  


“At last,” a figure wearing a white lab coat hissed victoriously as he stood hunched over his latest creation, “with this device, all the world shall be mine to command!” Throwing his head back, he let loose a loud, maniacal laugh, his black goggles hiding the deranged light gleaming in his eyes.

  


“A truly terrifying notion, that,” a smooth, unimpressed female voice dryly commented through the speakers.

  


“Hey, there’s no need to be rude, Jo,” the pouting sixteen-year-old responded, moving his goggles to rest in his wild, messy black hair, exposing bright green eyes lined with exhaustion.

  


“Well, your mad-scientist laugh does seem to be coming along well, at least,” his synthetic companion complimented.

  


“Good enough to scare Pepper, you think?” he asked with a grin, the dark circles around his eyes not detracting from their mirth.

  


“Combined with the plans for your ‘Doomsday Devices’ you keep ‘accidentally’ letting her find across the house, yes, I think it might just do the trick, cruel though it may be.”

  


“Hey, I gotta keep her on her toes around here somehow,” he defended with a laugh as he assembled the various components of his latest project. “Alright,” he said to the room as he stepped away from the table, “test number fourteen about to commence.”

  


Rolling up the sleeves of his lab coat revealed two thin, bracer-type devices shackled around his forearms, in the center of each of which was a small, glowing arc reactor that constantly flooded his body, and the creature inside him, with low levels of arc reactor energy. Because of these shackles, he was currently enjoying the longest uninterrupted period without an outburst he had ever known, as the devices’ unique energy signature almost seemed to hypnotize the rabid beast and keep it asleep. On top of that, by blending the creature’s weird-ass otherworldly power with arc reactor energy, he found himself able to draw upon and harness its energy more easily than he had ever managed before, and with fewer fried electronics and melted devices than he had once been so used to.

  


Not too shabby for tech he designed when he was thirteen.

  


As he slid the new, slightly bulkier silver gauntlet over the bracer, however, a certain VI fuddy-duddy of course decided to make himself known.

  


“Sir, if I might remind you, after your last incident, Mr. Stark has requested that you not test new technology without his presence, or failing that, without a bomb-disposal unit and a fire-fighting team on standby,” Jarvis annoyingly pointed out.

  


Harry groaned as his gauntlet clicked into place over the bracer. “Oh, come on, that explosion was _barely_ worth mentioning. And that car was hideous anyway, so really, that was me doing Tony a favor.”

  


“Regardless, I am going to have to insist that this test be put on hold until Mr. Stark returns from his opening of the Stark Expo,” Jarvis informed him. “Or I will be forced to send a message to Mr. Stark informing him of these events.”

  


“You know, that’s pretty tough talk for someone whose databases are just _begging_ to be flooded with another few dozen terabytes of porn,” Harry pointed out as he flexed his gauntlet to test its range of motion.

  


Jarvis went very quiet for a moment. “… you wouldn’t … would you?” he asked nervously.

  


“Oh, I think we both know the answer to that,” Harry answered with a grin.

  


“… And suddenly, I find my communications array has developed an unexplained malfunction,” Jarvis quietly relented.

  


“That’s what I thought,” he snickered as he warmed up the gauntlet. “Alright,” he repeated, turning towards a stack of basketball-sized rubber balls on the other side of the room as he raised his gauntlet. “Commencing test in three … two … one.”

  


The gauntlet spat out some sparks before it sputtered and died.

  


“You know, I think that might just be your best work yet,” his own traitorous VI commented.

  


“Oh, ha ha, Jo,” he flatly replied as he disconnected the gauntlet and began disassembling it once again. “Hey, Dum-E,” he called out to the … “helpful” robotic assistant in the workshop. “Can you bring me the soldering iron?”

  


The robotic arm on wheels whined happily at him before trundling towards the tool bench.

  


As he continued tinkering with the various components strewn across the table, Dum-E rolled up clutching … a hammer.

  


“… I guess that answers that question,” he observed, taking the extremely non-soldering-iron-shaped hammer from mechanical nincompoop as it trilled proudly at him. “Why don’t you clean up that table over there?” he suggested to the eager machine, pointing towards a table covered with the scattered bits and pieces of a previous project.

  


Dum-E gave him a cheerful affirmative beep before rolling away … in the exact opposite direction of the table.

  


“You know, I think he’s actually getting better,” Jo commented.

  


“Oh, without a doubt,” he agreed wholeheartedly, walking over to grab the soldering iron himself.

  


After several more minutes of careful tinkering, during which Dum-E rolled over and started sweeping the floor around his feet, for some reason, he had the gauntlet reassembled and was once more in position to begin the test.

  


“Fifteenth time’s the charm, is it?” Jo asked with an impressive amount of snark for a digital being.

  


“Don’t make me turn off your anti-malware,” he threatened as the gauntlet activated with a hum. “Okay, initializing test in three … two … one.”

  


The gauntlet’s hum reached a crescendo, and a ribbon of emerald light reached out and connected the gauntlet to one of the rubber balls.

  


“Connection successfully established,” Harry interpreted, his exhausted eyes shining with excitement as the slowly undulating current of energy was successfully maintained, enveloping the ball in a faint green aura. “Beginning remote manipulation of subject.”

  


Slowly and carefully, he raised his gauntlet, and to his delight, the ball followed suit, gently rotating in the field of energy.

  


“Initial manipulation successful,” he stated with a delighted grin. “Beginning more advanced manipulation of target.”

  


Flipping his palm upwards, he gently cupped his hand and pulled it towards him. Sure enough, the ribbon of energy reaching from his gauntlet to the ball retracted, and the ball was carefully pulled towards him. Turning his hand and pushing outwards, the ball floated back towards the far wall.

  


_Time for another scientific_ _observation_ , he thought.

  


“Awww _yisssss_ ,” he declared instead, moving his hand left and right and watching the ball successfully move across the room to track his movements.

  


Suddenly, he clenched his fist and jerked it back to his torso, causing the ball to rocket towards him like a bullet from a gun. Just as it reached him, though, he snapped his gauntleted fist out in a punch, striking the ball and reversing the polarity of the stream all in one move.

  


The room echoed with an ear-ringing pop as the rubber ball struck the far wall and exploded with all the speed and force of cannon fire.

  


“Well, I’d say that trial looks like a success,” he observed as he happily looked over his quietly humming gauntlet.

  


“Not from the ball’s perspective,” Jo pointed out as the room was filled with the oh so appetizing smell of melted rubber.

  


“Well, if you’d just let me use kittens like I wanted to …,” he retorted with a grin as he crossed the room.

  


“You are a monster,” Jo dryly informed him. “Wait, what are you doing?”

  


“Moving on to the next stage of the test,” he explained from next to one of Tony’s unnecessarily expensive cars.

  


“Oh, you cannot be serious.”

  


“As a general rule, you’re completely right,” he happily replied. “Just this once, though … yeah.”

  


“This … is an incredibly stupid idea,” she diagnosed as he aimed the gauntlet at the car.

  


He paused thoughtfully. “Agreed,” he consented. “But sometimes, you gotta go through with a few stupid ideas before you can know what the smart ones are.”

  


“Does that even make sense?” Jo asked.

  


“Not even a little,” the grinning teenager unrepentantly admitted as he activated the gauntlet and enveloped the car in the stream of emerald energy. “Okay, new subject is an Audi R8, weighing just under 4,000 pounds.”

  


“And costing upwards of $180,000,” Jarvis pointed out in a slightly nervous tone.

  


“It’ll be _fine_ , you worrywart,” he assured the oddly anxious VI.

  


“Says the person who just murdered an innocent rubber ball,” Jo pointed out.

  


“Hey! Whose side are you on?” he demanded indignantly.

  


“At the moment?” Jo asked in amusement.

  


“Ugh. Attempting remote manipulation,” he declared, shaking his head at the fickleness of friends as he gently raised his gauntlet.

  


For a moment, the car remained stationary on the ground as the undulating ribbon of energy curved through the air to remain connected. However, that ribbon quickly grew brighter and started flowing faster and faster, until finally, the car relinquished its hold on land and lifted into the air.

  


“Whoo! Suck it, gravity!” Harry happily cheered as the two-ton mass of steel floated in the air at the end of what looked like a brilliant green bolt of lightning.

  


“This is most definitely not going to end well,” Jo predicted as the car soared around the room.

  


“Pfft. No faith in me,” he complained as he continued with his patently bad idea.

  


The entire room seemed to sit with bated breath as he floated the car to and fro, despite the fact that he was the only person there that actually breathed. Which was a rather unfortunate quality, when the dust kicked up by Dum-E’s sweeping forced him into a sudden sneezing fit.

  


However, when he was finally able to fully open his eyes, he very thankfully found the car still floating untouched in the air, albeit disturbingly close to the ceiling.

  


He decided to end the test at that point. And so, with exceeding care, but also delight at how easy it was, he floated the two-ton car back towards the lineup of other vehicles.

  


“Okay,” he said quietly as the car floated over its parking spot, but at completely the wrong angle. “Attempting fine-tuned remote manipulation.”

  


As he felt various new servos activate in his gauntlet, he carefully moved his fingers into position. Then, with agonizing care, he gently moved his fingers to slowly spin the car in the air. Finally, as it was properly positioned, he began the final part of the test.

  


“Lowering subject,” he informed the room, nervously swallowing.

  


Gently, ever so gently, he lowered his arm, bringing the very expensive vehicle closer and closer to the ground, until finally, with a faint squeal of rubber, the car was once again groundborn.

  


“Deactivating gauntlet,” he declared with a relieved sigh as the ribbon of energy connecting his gauntlet to the car disappeared. “So … you were saying, Jo?” he asked smugly.

  


“Wait for it …,” she answered expectantly.

  


“For what, the car to spontaneously explode?” he asked in bemusement.

  


“Hey, this is _you_ we’re talking about. That could actually happen,” she pointed out with an audible grin.

  


In response, he simply threw his hands up in exasperation.

  


… and accidentally activated the gauntlet in the process.

  


He yelped and covered his head as the room was suddenly shaken with a massive, booming crash and clouds of powdered concrete and drywall roiled through the air.

  


Coughing his lungs clear, Harry waved his non-gauntleted hand through the air to clear it, but as he laid eyes on the source of the collision, he rather regretted this.

  


“And now, the phrase ‘I rest my case’ comes to mind,” Jo laughed as he stared aghast at the expensive sports car embedded halfway through the ceiling.

  


As he stood there staring, Dum-E rolled up and joined him, giving a long, low whistle as it stared at the devastation.

  


“Dum-E … what have you done?” he asked the machine in mock horror.

  


The robotic arm jerked to face him as it belted out a series of confused and alarmed whines and beeps.

  


“Yep. You are so going to get it when Tony gets home,” he informed his new patsy. “Enjoy being turned into a wine rack.”

  


The panicked machine let out long, mournful beep that sounded suspiciously like “Nooooooo!”

  


* * *

  


Later that evening, another, even more expensive car pulled up to the elaborate Malibu mansion.

  


“Well, I think that opening was a huge success,” Tony Stark boasted to Pepper as Happy opened their doors.

  


“Of course you do. It was about you, just like everything else,” Pepper dryly pointed out.

  


“Exactly. Ergo, success,” Tony confirmed, making Pepper roll her eyes as they walked towards the house.

  


“Do you think Harry’s been alright here by himself?” Pepper asked in some amount of concern.

  


“Of course. After all, he’s the one who wanted to stay. And he’s, what, twelve by now? He’s fine hanging around here by himself,” Tony assured her.

  


“Very funny,” Pepper commented before dragging them both to a halt before the doors. “Seriously though, Tony, don’t you think it’s a bit … _concerning_ … that he doesn’t really spend time with kids his own age? Or really anyone, in fact?”

  


“Hey, what am I, chopped liver?” Tony complained indignantly. “And what about how Happy’s been giving him boxing lessons? Are you implying that just because Happy works for me, he’s not a person? Because that’s called ‘classism,’ Pepper, and I don’t do it.”

  


“You know what I mean,” Pepper replied in exasperation. “With the whole home-schooling thing, he’s not spending time with other teenagers, and he spends almost all his other time either in the workshop with you, or he just inexplicably disappears for hours on end. You’re not worried about this?”

  


“Honestly? Not really,” Tony replied candidly. “C’mon, we both knew he was never going to be hanging out at Chuck E. Cheese’s or going to see the Rugrats on Ice.”

  


“Yeah, especially given the fact that he’s not _six_ ,” Pepper pointed out with a flat look.

  


“The point is, with his mind, he was always going to be a bit of an outsider,” Tony explained. “ _Especially_ with his mind.”

  


Pepper sighed. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense, given the level of some of the stuff he’s developed for the company,” Pepper reluctantly agreed. “Like the smart phones and cell towers. Unparalleled coverage and quality for a fraction of the price. Not to mention the computers and tablets and such, and their unheard-of processing power and speed.”

  


“Decent innovation, I guess,” Tony halfheartedly complimented.

  


“That’s one way of putting it,” Pepper remarked with an amused look. “It’s only made Stark Industries one of the biggest names in computer technology.”

  


“Yeah, like I said: decent innovation,” Tony repeated, somewhat defensively.

  


“Especially for someone who hasn’t even graduated college, yet,” Pepper pointed out, just to rub it in. “And now that I think about it, the engineers are currently looking over his designs for car and plane engines, aren’t they?”

  


“Oh, he’s already moved past undergrad college courses in his homeschooling,” Tony mentioned, definitely not changing the subject. “Jarvis and I have him wrapping up some graduate school level courses at the moment.”

  


“… Seriously?” Pepper asked in astonishment.

  


“I mean, that’s not _that_ impressive,” Tony defended. “I graduated MIT at seventeen, after all, so he’s not beating me by _that_ much.”

  


“You mean he already has college degrees?” Pepper asked, her eyes wide. “In what?”

  


“Oh, who knows,” Tony airily responded. “It’s not like I’m keeping track.”

  


Pepper rolled her eyes at that very believable fact. “But why haven’t you told me? In fact, why hasn’t Harry?”

  


“Oh, he has no idea,” Tony explained matter-of-factly.

  


Pepper opened and closed her mouth a few times as she tried to wrap her head around that statement. “He what?”

  


“Yeah, he’s pretty much just writing whatever papers we ask and passing or testing out of any courses Jarvis and I lay out for him. We’re just not mentioning what they’re for or where they’re coming from.”

  


Pepper blinked in confusion. “But why? Why keep this a secret from him?”

  


“Because it’s funny. Duh,” Tony replied simply. “Plus, Happy and I have a bet going as to whether I can get him to earn a doctorate without him realizing.”

  


Pepper narrowed her eyes at him. “A bet?”

  


“Yeah,” Tony replied completely unashamedly. “Why? You want in? The minimum buy-in’s 500, but I can get you some pretty good odds if you bet pro-doctorate. After all, he’s already well on his way to a few master’s degrees without noticing.”

  


Pepper simply stared at him flatly.

  


“I’m starting to think that Harry’s the mature one and that it’s _you_ who shouldn’t be left to his own devices,” she finally declared before turning and heading inside.

  


Of course, she was forced to change her tune once she caught sight of what was waiting for them inside.

  


Namely, the front half of a car erupting from the middle of what was once the living room floor.

  


“So … you were saying?” Tony asked Pepper with a smirk.

  


She sighed. “I was wrong. You two are apparently a perfect fit,” she said wearily as she walked away.

  


“Oh, Harry, Harry, Harry,” Tony mused as he shook his head at the sports car cresting his living room floor before heading downstairs to the shop. There, he found Dum-E somehow appearing morose as it slowly worked its way with a broom through the rubble piled underneath the back end of the ceiling-car. Meanwhile, the slightly shorter-than-average teenager doubtless responsible stood hunched over a table liberally coated with scattered pages filled with equations and formulae, apparently working on yet another project.

  


Shocker.

  


“So, the opening of the Expo was a success. How was everything over here?” Tony asked the teenaged, and fairly destructive, workaholic.

  


“It was okay,” Harry replied casually as he continued to work on his notes.

  


“Just okay?” Tony asked, stepping further into the room. “Nothing interesting happened?”

  


The silence of Harry apparently pausing to consider the question was somewhat broken by the clatter of a piece of rubble falling free from the broken ceiling around what was once one of Tony’s favorite cars.

  


“Nope, nothing interesting at all,” Harry very blatantly lied.

  


“Really? Well, that’s good to know,” Tony replied, turning to leave.

  


“Oh, hey, I almost forgot,” he corrected, pausing and turning back halfway to the door, “Why is there a car parked in my ceiling?”

  


“Oh, _that_ ,” Harry said, smacking his forehead in feigned dramatic realization. “Yeah, Dum-E did that.”

  


Curiously, while this declaration was followed by rather frantic and emphatic gestures from aforementioned robotic assistant, the machine never made a sound.

  


“Did you mute Dum-E again?” Tony asked in amused exasperation.

  


“Of course not,” Harry assured him. “Clearly, he is just so burdened by guilt that it has rendered him speechless, and thus should be taken as proof of his crime. Kind of like a reverse _Telltale Heart_ kind of thing.”

  


“Uh huh,” Tony responded. “So your story is that a poorly made robot–”

  


Said robot made a mute gesture that seemed a mix of indignant and hurt, but he ignored it.

  


“–that only has a maximum lifting capacity of about forty pounds, somehow managed to throw a car weighing about four _thousand_ pounds with enough force to embed it halfway through my ceiling.”

  


Harry turned and studied Dum-E before turning back to Tony.

  


“Yes.”

  


“Uh huh. And how are you proposing he managed it?” Tony asked.

  


“Steroids?” Harry suggested. “Or, the machine equivalent, I guess. Maybe … ster _droid_ s?”

  


Tony lowered his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, try again.”

  


“Um … disgruntled valet?” Harry suggested hopefully.

  


“Meaning Happy,” Tony interpreted.

  


“Yes. Happy must have done it,” Harry accused.

  


“You were testing new tech again, weren’t you.”

  


“Of course I was. What, are you new here?”

  


Tony groaned. “Couldn’t you wreck my cars by taking them out for a joyride like a normal teenager?” he asked.

  


“Well, all the evidence indicates ‘no’ … so I’m going to say ‘no’,” Harry responded. “Besides, this is only car number three, drama queen.”

  


“Ugh. Where’s that box?” Tony muttered to himself, looking around the shop.

  


“Oh, no. Uh uh. I’m not falling for that again. You’re not getting me back in the ‘Up for adoption’ box,” Harry declared emphatically.

  


“What? _Nooo_ , we’re just going for a car ride,” Tony assured him with a clap on his shoulder, still clearly searching for the box.

  


“Would this car ride be taking us in the vicinity of the fire station? Or an orphanage?” Harry asked.

  


“… It _might_ not,” Tony hesitantly assured him.

  


“ _Yeaaah_ , I’m not going,” Harry decided.

  


“Well, I gotta do something. I’m running out of cars, here!” Tony complained.

  


“Here’s a suggestion: build a workshop that isn’t your stupid garage, cheapskate,” Harry suggested.

  


“Oh, you wanna talk ‘cheap’? Guess whose account the money to replace my car is going to be coming out of?” Tony smugly asked.

  


“ _Damn it_ ,” Harry complained.

  


“Yeah, ‘damn it’,” Tony agreed with a victorious smirk. “Might even make a pretty reasonable dent in your cash supply, too,” Tony continued nettling. “Speaking of, why is that? I mean, you should be absolutely rolling in dough from all the stuff you’ve designed for the company.”

  


“Well, someone’s got to be designing stuff for them, since you’re constantly off Iron Manning all over the place,” Harry muttered.

  


“Okay, ‘Iron Manning’ is not a real world,” Tony declared. “You can’t just turn any noun into a verb whenever you want to.”

  


“Sure you can. This is English. None of its rules make sense,” Harry argued.

  


Tony’s eyes narrowed. “You’re trying to change the subject, aren’t you?”

  


“Maybe. Or perhaps my feelings about how asinine the rules of the English language are compared to those of virtually any other language simply trump my feelings about whatever else we were talking about,” Harry offered.

  


“What we were talking about is what’s been going on with the vast sums of money you’ve earned since you started supplying the company with designs like they were going out of style,” Tony helpfully reminded him, not taking the bait.

  


“Oh, right. They’ve been going … places,” Harry very informatively answered.

  


“For what?”

  


“… Things,” Harry elaborated.

  


“Mm-hmm,” Tony replied, staring at the shifty and, as usual, clearly sleep-deprived teenager. “And do these ‘places’ and ‘things’ have anything to do with where you keep disappearing to for hours at a time?”

  


“… They might.”

  


Tony snorted. “You know, we’re eventually going to have to talk about this secrecy business.”

  


“Yeah, you’re one to talk,” Harry muttered under his breath, though he kept his voice low enough that Tony wouldn’t be able to hear it.

  


“Especially since it almost seems like you’re angling to supplant me as CEO of the company, the way you keep flooding our tech department with designs,” he continued.

  


“Blegh! Don’t even say something that horrible,” Harry told him, visibly shuddering.

  


“What? You don’t like the thought of being CEO?” Tony asked curiously.

  


“What, are you kidding? Stuck in some office making asinine decisions about who does what where all day every day?” Harry dry-heaved. “I’d rather run an ad praising Hammer Tech.”

  


“Okay, _that_ seems a bit excessive,” Tony countered. “And besides, _I’m_ CEO, and you don’t see me strapped to a desk chair, do you?”

  


“Yeah, that’s because you’ve got Pepper doing all the actual work,” Harry pointed out. “I’m pretty sure normal CEOs actually have to, you know, _CEO_ at some point.”

  


“Hey, she doesn’t do … _all_ the CEO stuff,” he argued halfheartedly. “I sign stuff, sometimes.”

  


“Well, then I stand corrected,” Harry amended in a totally not sarcastic voice.

  


Tony rolled his eyes at the teen. “Alright, you know what, let’s just move on to your little do-it-yourself skylight.” He eyed his formerly pristine ceiling. “Can you at least tell me something cool came out of it?”

  


Harry gave him an offended look.

  


“Oh, for– … yeah, yeah, all your designs are amazing, Mr. Sensitive,” Tony condescendingly assured him.

  


“Damn right they are,” Harry agreed with a triumphant nod, to which Tony rolled his eyes again.

  


“So come on, show me,” Tony told him eagerly.

  


* * *

  


“… That’s … not where I parked that,” Happy commented in confusion as he stared at the half of a sports car that was apparently living its secret dream of being a coffee table.

  


“Harry,” Pepper succinctly explained.

  


“Ah,” Happy nodded in understanding. “Another one bites the dust, huh?”

  


“Apparently,” Pepper tiredly agreed as she looked over the wreckage of the living room.

  


“You know, when I was a teenager, I would accidentally break lamps,” Happy mentioned. “Once or twice, I got a dent in the family car.”

  


“Your parents were clearly very lucky people,” Pepper agreed, daydreaming about what it would be like to live a life where cars crashing through the floor were not normal occurrences.

  


Making the next car to be sent careening through the living room floor just an incredible example of terrible timing.

  


Sure enough, though, once the room stopped shaking and the high-pitched screaming stopped, the floor had indeed developed another car-shaped growth next to the first, only this time shaped like the mangled back end of a black Maserati Spyder.

  


“HARRY!” a furious Pepper shouted through the cracks in the floor.

  


“That wasn’t me!” Harry yelled back. “It was–”

  


“Yes it was!” Tony yelled over him. “Bad Harry! You’re grounded!”

  


“What?! You lying bastard! That was you!” Harry shouted back.

  


“Oof, bad language _and_ false accusations? Double grounded!” Tony smugly declared.

  


“Oh, you want to see some bad language? Try watching the video I’ll be posting on the internet of you waking up tomorrow morning to find that stupid goatee shaved off your stupid face!” Harry threatened.

  


Dead silence followed this proclamation.

  


“Even you wouldn’t stoop that low,” Tony tried to convince himself.

  


Even Pepper stopped her pained temple-rubbing to stare incredulously at the floor upon hearing that.

  


“… Fine, you’re not grounded,” Tony muttered with a clearly audible sulk. “Little brat.”

  


“Ass,” Harry muttered back in his customary response, though with a clear undertone of reluctant amusement.

  


Pepper groaned. “I need a drink,” the perpetually overstressed woman muttered to herself as she turned and headed for the bar.

  


“Wait for me,” the thankfully no long screaming Happy told her hoarsely as he climbed out from behind the couch and hurried after her.

  


* * *

  


“So how ‘bout that? It actually _was_ surprisingly easy to send a car through the ceiling,” Tony observed with a dust-filled cough as he slipped the gauntlet off his arm, carefully minding the various wires still connecting it to Harry’s shackles.

  


“Told ya’,” Harry replied, disconnecting the gauntlet and setting it on the table to be further refined later.

  


“Yes, you have a very fine grasp of the flaws in your tech. Bravo,” Tony responded, earning an indignant look from the teen. “Still don’t know why you’d blow off the Expo to work this piece of junk, though.”

  


Harry gave him a flat look. “Let’s see, spend the evening watching you strut around telling everyone just how awesome you are, or actually get some work done. Yeah, that was a tough choice.”

  


“It wasn’t … _all_ about me telling them how awesome I am,” Tony defended.

  


Harry’s unconvinced expression was made all the more potent by his exhaustion-darkened eyes. “Did you go with the ‘never has a greater phoenix metaphor been personified in human history’ line?”

  


Tony gave him an amusedly indignant look. “There were dancers, too,” he replied instead.

  


“You mean your ‘Ironettes’?” Harry asked. “Yeah, not interested.”

  


Tony gasped and stared at him in horror. “Blasphemy!”

  


Harry simply rolled his eyes.

  


“Seriously, though,” Tony continued as they started picking their way over the rubble to make their way upstairs. “I’m worried about you.”

  


“Are you, now?” Harry asked in amusement, though while stifling a yawn.

  


“Of course. I mean, I adopt a kid, and after four years, he still isn’t running around partying, or getting caught on camera with his pants off and a lampshade on his head, or taking cop cars for a joyride when they come to break things up? It’s embarrassing. You’re making me look bad,” Tony complained.

  


“Trust me, you don’t need my help to make yourself look bad,” Harry assured him as they started climbing up the stairs.

  


“Hey. Respect your elders, boy,” Tony ordered him.

  


“Will do, grandpa,” Harry replied as they reached the main floor.

  


“Alright, you know what?” Tony started.

  


Harry did not, in fact, know what, and sadly, he never would, as Tony was suddenly interrupted by the doorbell ringing.

  


They both stared at the door in surprise at the unexpected intrusion, leaving a now slightly tipsy Pepper to reluctantly walk over and open it. However, the redheaded woman on the other side appeared slightly taken aback at being greeted with the sight of Pepper drinking straight from a bottle.

  


“Um … US marshal,” the woman finally introduced herself.

  


In response, Pepper simply sighed and waved her in.

  


“ _Et tu_ , Brute?” Tony asked Pepper upon seeing her freely invite “the enemy” into his home.

  


Pepper simply took another swig from her bottle.

  


“Tony Stark?” the woman asked as she stepped up to Tony.

  


“Uh, no, sorry. He’s not here,” he said to her face.

  


She furrowed her brow in confusion as she stared at the person who was very clearly Tony Stark.

  


“I’m a Starkbot,” the … man? … explained. “Top-of-the-line robotic decoy technology. So sorry.”

  


Harry rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you just tell her that her Tony Stark is in another castle while you’re at it?”

  


“I’m sorry, I am not programmed to respond to that type of question. My code is limited to behavior modeling and simple interaction simulations,” the possible Tonybot answered mechanically.

  


“You are hereby ordered to appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee tomorrow morning at 9:00 am,” the marshal informed him, somehow unconvinced by Tony’s incredible performance as she held out a subpoena.

  


“Uh, I don’t really like being handed things,” Tony replied in a slight break of character as he stared at the outstretched subpoena. He turned to Harry.

  


“Hey, don’t look at me. I’m not jumping on that grenade for you,” Harry told him, making a cross with his fingers as he stared at the subpoena like it was a demonic artifact.

  


The poor US marshal seemed a bit lost and more than a little judgy as she stared at the two of them, at least until a groaning Pepper stepped forward and took the subpoena herself.

  


Shaking her head, the woman turned to leave, only to pause and look at them questioningly upon spotting the car-riddled floor behind them.

  


“Remodeling,” Harry explained. “Using cars seemed easier than renting a bulldozer.”

  


This time, as the woman walked away, he distinctly heard her mutter under her breath, “Frickin’ rich people.”

  


As the door closed behind her, Tony gave Pepper a look of deep-seated betrayal.

  


“What?” she asked.

  


“ _That_ , what,” Tony said, pointing at the subpoena. “What happened to you fending them off?”

  


“Four years, Tony,” Pepper answered with a glare. “Four. _Years_. Since you declared yourself Iron Man and started flying all over the world in your stupid suit.” Pepper prowled closer to the nervous-looking Tony as she continued. “I _have_ been fending them off. I’ve been claiming scheduling conflicts. I’ve been throwing patent lawyers at them. I’ve been quoting Constitutional Amendments at them. I’ve been flat out bullshitting them and leading them in circles for _four years_! I’ve got nothing left! _My well!_ _I_ _s!_ _DRY_ _!_ ”

  


“Oh,” Tony said simply. “Well, why didn’t you say so?”

  


Harry eyed Pepper nervously, waiting for her to erupt, but after a few moments of staring at Tony with what looked like actual flames in her eyes, she simply turned away and started chugging from her bottle once again.

  


“It’s not like you didn’t know this would be coming eventually,” a relieved Harry pointed out to Tony.

  


“Yeah, but it’s going to be so _annoying_ ,” he complained.

  


“And yet somehow, I suspect you’ll live,” Harry said.

  


“ _We’ll_ live,” Tony corrected him. “You’re coming too.”

  


“I most certainly am not,” Harry countered. “Me, with my past, stepping into a courtroom? I’ll probably burst into flame or something just crossing the threshold. Count me out. Besides, I have work to do.”

  


“You can’t just stay holed up in here forever,” Tony argued.

  


“Challenge accepted,” Harry happily retorted.

  


Tony sighed. “Fine. You can stay, but on one condition: you fix my damn floor, and when we get back, I am dragging you out of this house to have some fun, and I’m not going to hear one word of complaint when I do.”

  


“Technically, that would be three conditions,” the tired teen pointed out. “But before I accept, where and when will we be going?”

  


“The Monaco Grand Prix, and next week,” Tony told him proudly. “And this isn’t negotiable. Because this whole workaholic thing you’ve got going on? It’s making me itchy. You’re going to learn to have fun, or I swear to God, I’m shoving you in that box and dropping you off at the fire station myself.”

  


Harry rolled his eyes. “You should write a parenting book. But fine, agreed.”

  


“Good. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to make sure Pepper is at least somewhat sober for the trip ahead of us.”

  


Harry looked past him to see Pepper still firmly attached to her bottle. “Yeah, I think that ship has sailed.”

  


Tony sighed. “Well then, I guess I’ll have to go with Plan B instead.”

  


“Which is?” Harry asked curiously.

  


Tony grinned. “Get her drunk enough that it’s funny.”

  


* * *

  


**Later the next day**

  


“ _I will serve this great nation at the pleasure of myself. And if there’s one thing I’ve proven, it’s that you can count on me to pleasure myself.”_

  


“Real classy, dude,” Harry commented, using his new gauntlet to float a heavy piece of machinery into place while splitting his focus with a laptop screen that was currently playing the tail end of a fairly amusing and eminently _Tony_ trial, where the government had attempted, rather fruitlessly, to force Tony to hand over his Iron Man suit. Of course, the self-proclaimed and _exceedingly_ humble superhero was the source of only part of Harry’s amusement. The rest was due to how obviously hungover Pepper was as she staggered out the courthouse after him, large, dark sunglasses covering her eyes and one hand perpetually rubbing the side of her clearly aching head.

  


“Isn’t he, though?” a female voice asked in amusement as a dark figure welded the floating device to the rest of the machine. “Clear,” she called out as she finished, allowing him to cease the stream of energy holding the massive device in place. It fully settled against the rest with only the faintest groan as gravity once again reasserted itself.

  


Harry looked over his gauntlet as the welder hopped down to the concrete floor. “It looks like I was right; this thing is going to be a huge benefit to us after all.”

  


“I’ll say,” she agreed as she turned and looked across the rest of the large, open space of the warehouse-sized lab, which was currently filled with bulky, and occasionally just outright massive devices, most of which had been assembled by hand.

  


No mean feat, considering there was only two of them to split the labor.

  


“You think this one will work?” she asked him as he started shifting another piece of machinery with his gauntlet.

  


“Once it’s finished, of course it will,” he assured her as he settled the piece into place. “Why wouldn’t it?”

  


“Because this will be, what, the thirty-fifth design?” she pointed out as she welded the new part into place. “That’s a lot of failures.”

  


“No it’s not,” he argued. “We’ve simply found thirty-four ways that won’t work. But we only need to find one way to succeed.”

  


She paused and stared at him. “Are you ripping off Thomas Edison right now?”

  


“I prefer the term ‘paraphrasing’,” he replied.

  


Shaking her head in amusement, she finished welding the connections together and hopped down, allowing him to release the component and deactivate his gauntlet.

  


“There,” she said, wiping her hands. “That’s the biggest part of the machine. Now comes the million or so small parts that need working on.”

  


“Hooray,” Harry very sarcastically celebrated as he picked up his tools and got to work. Not to be outdone, his companion walked over to a nearby table to discard her welding gear and grab her own tools. However, she paused as she glanced over a series of pages covered edge to edge in formulae and equations in Harry’s tight, precise handwriting, which she remembered seeing him working on when she arrived.

  


“What is all this?” she asked holding up a page.

  


“Project Mirium,” Harry replied, glancing over from where he knelt next to the enormous machine. “Stuff I’m working on for Tony. It’s where most of the rest of my time is going.”

  


“Important stuff, then,” she interpreted, trying to make heads or tails of what she was reading.

  


“Frustrating, too,” he answered. “I’ve been trying to figure it out for a couple years now. Just keep hitting one brick wall after another.” He blew away a faint trail of smoke from the piece he was soldering. “It’s kinda discouraging.”

  


Setting the page down, she looked over at another table, this one absolutely overflowing with countless other designs and diagrams for half-finished projects. “And those?”

  


“Stuff I’m designing for Stark Industries,” he explained, flicking a few switches on the part of the device he was working on to test how it was running. “They’re getting pretty pushy about those, lately, given how a certain Tinman is a bit busy flying all over the place. But whatever. Got to make money to afford all this stuff somehow, right?”

  


This time, as his companion looked over the vast laboratory, and the enormous investment of both money and time it represented, she was filled with immense waves of guilt, which only increased as she saw Harry shift his goggles to rub at his blood-shot, exhausted eyes.

  


The fact that this was practically their default state nowadays simply made matters worse.

  


“When’s the last time you slept, Harry?” she asked him quietly.

  


“Sleep is for the weak,” he declared, replacing his goggles and shaking his head as he tried to focus his tired eyes on the piece he was soldering.

  


“And for the living,” she argued.

  


He didn’t respond.

  


Sighing, she stepped over and knelt down in front of him, gently placing her hands on his own as she lowered the soldering iron. “This has to stop, Harry. You’re doing too much.”

  


“No,” he argued fiercely, tearing off his darkened goggles to more closely inspect his work. “I’m not doing enough.”

  


“Harry–,” she began.

  


“I made you a promise,” he reminded her, almost glaring as he stared into her eyes. “I _keep_ my promises.”

  


“And that means you have to kill yourself?!” she demanded with a glare of her own. “Every time I get here, you’ve already been here for hours, and every time I leave, you look like you’re still going to be here for hours to come. For _years_ you’ve been doing this. It can’t go on! I’m not going to let you kill yourself for this!”

  


For several tense seconds, they glared at each other, both unwilling to budge an inch. However, all at once, Harry’s immense fatigue caught up with him, both physically and mentally, and he collapsed back until he was sitting on the cold concrete floor.

  


“I made you a promise,” he repeated quietly, his head hanging low. “I need to keep it.”

  


Gently, the taller girl wrapped him in her arms, resting her chin on his head and pressing his face into her warm chest. “I know, Harry,” she said softly. “I can’t tell you how much that means to me. I really can’t.” Cupping his cheeks, she leaned him backwards and looked deep into his eyes. “But I _will not_ let you kill yourself over this,” she repeated firmly. “You will keep your promise … but not today. And not tomorrow. We need to take our time with this, do it right.” She gave a small, rueful smile. “After all, at this point, it’s not like it’ll make a huge difference if it takes us an extra year or two to pull this off. We’re not exactly making much headway, after all, if we’re being completely honest.”

  


Sighing, he didn’t argue as she pulled him back into the gentle, soothing embrace, her arms wrapping around his tired form like a soft, warm blanket as she gently ran her fingers through his hair, almost lulling him to sleep right there.

  


“So what do you want to do?” he tiredly mumbled against her shirt.

  


“I’m going to keep working on this,” she told him. “And you are going to go home and _sleep_.”

  


His first instinct was to protest that he had too much to do to sleep, but as his exhausted mind churned the idea over, he reluctantly came to realize that this was probably just proving her point: he was trying to do too much.

  


“After that,” she continued, still softly stroking his messy hair, “you are going to focus on all the other stuff you’ve got going on for a while. And you are going to take. Your. Time.” He could practically feel the intensity in her eyes on him as she emphasized that. “Clear your head. Relax. Take a break. I’ll handle everything here. If and when things get more settled on your end, we can talk about this more then. But even when that happens, you’re still not going to going to be just throwing yourself into this like you have been. I know why you’re doing it, and it means so much to me, but I’m not going to lose my first and only real friend over this. I won’t.”

  


He sighed. “I’m sorry.”

  


Rolling her eyes and smiling, she leaned back and gently bopped him on the forehead, because only he would apologize for something like this. “Now come on; time for you to go.”

  


He snorted as she stood up and pulled him to his feet. “Oh, I see how it goes. You get me here just long enough to move all the heavy stuff, and then once you’ve got what you needed, you just kick me to the curb.”

  


“Exactly. Now get out,” she good-naturedly ordered, shoving his papers into his arms and shooing him towards the jump pad.

  


He stared at her in faux-irritation as he obediently headed for the pad. “You know, back in the day, no-one would have pushed me around like that without coming home to find themselves looted to the bedrock,” he complained.

  


“Yes, yes, you’re very intimidating, _Spectre_ ,” she assured him in what he considered to be far too sarcastic of a tone. “Now go home and take a nap.”

  


“You take a nap,” maturely bit back as he activated the pad, teleporting back home to the Stark mansion.

  


The girl rolled her eyes and got back to work, a fond smile on her lips.

  


* * *

  


As a still slightly hungover Pepper followed Tony through the doors of the mansion later that afternoon, she cast a baleful glance at the bar.

  


“Never again,” she promised with a groan.

  


“Probably again,” Tony corrected.

  


However, before she could correct him (despite part of her reluctantly agreeing with him), she was distracted by what she saw further inside the house. Thankfully, this time, it wasn’t wanton destruction, as even the previous wreckage of their living room had been successfully repaired while they were gone. Or at least, the floor had been. The once lavishly expensive furnishings, such as the coffee table and couches, were nowhere to be seen, and were presumably weighing down some garbage truck somewhere, which made her sigh regretfully, even if it wasn’t exactly a surprise.

  


Rather than that, though, her attention was drawn to the passed-out form of Harry sprawled over the steps leading upstairs. With exasperation, she noted how his head was burrowed into a folder full of papers and drawings like it was a pillow, suggesting that he had, once again, fallen asleep on the way to his room.

  


“Well that’s just embarrassing,” Tony declared.

  


Pepper sighed. “You really need to have a talk with him about this kind of thing,” she said.

  


“I did,” he assured her. “I told him he was disgracing the Stark name with his behavior.”

  


Pepper looked confused. “Wait, wha–”

  


“I mean, no underage drinking, no partying, no hooking up with girls, just work work work work work all day, every day. Shameful!”

  


Pepper groaned and rubbed her aching head, which she was starting to suspect wasn’t due to her hangover. “Can you at least get him to bed, please? I’m going to go upstairs and take a shower.”

  


“Sure thing, hon. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of this,” he promised.

  


Pepper gave him a soft, grateful kiss before heading upstairs, carefully stepping around the unconscious teenager as she did.

  


After she left, Tony spent a couple moments looking at his lightly snoring adoptive son before heading off to grab something from what remained of the living room. Returning, he gently dropped a lamp shade over the teen’s head.

  


“Much better,” he decided, heading to his room and leaving the boy sprawled over the stairs.

  


* * *

  


Upstairs in his room, a shirtless Tony leaned against a dresser and stared into a mirror while listening to the gentle thrum of water as Pepper showered in the adjoining bathroom.

  


Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a small, innocent-looking silver device. However, despite its innocuous appearance, he stared at it as if was a live viper.

  


Reluctantly, he pressed the tip of a finger to the device, suppressing a wince as it took a small sample of blood. However, any pain he felt was quickly overshadowed by the immense wave of sheer crippling despair he felt as read the display.

  


‘ _Blood toxicity: 94%’_

  


Looking up, he stared at his bare torso in the mirror, and the smooth, healthy-looking skin surrounding the arc reactor in his chest. However, as he pressed a button on the watch-like device on his wrist, this appearance changed drastically.

  


His chest was a dense, horrific network of blackened veins radiating outwards from the reactor, looking like something that would be more at home on a zombie than on an actual living human being. Turning his head, he winced as he saw that the corrupted, poisoned veins now reached all the way up the side of his neck to his cheek.

  


Sighing, he lowered his head and slammed his hand into the dresser.

  


“ _Damn it_ ,” he whispered, clutching the reactor that was, oh so ironically, both keeping him alive and killing him at the same time.

  


As he stared into the hopeless eyes meeting his own in the mirror, one thought rang clear in his mind:

  


_I’m running out of time_.

  


He heard the water shutting off in the bathroom, and with that, he stood up straight, bullheadedly shoving through the dense thicket of hopelessness and depression he was trapped in and once more putting on the lackadaisical, devil-may-care face of Tony Stark. With a push of a button on his holographic disguise projector, adapted from some of Harry’s early tech, his transformation was complete.

  


As Pepper made her way out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel and drying her hair, she was surprised by Tony stepping forward and pulling her into soft, warm kiss.

  


“Tony?” she asked in confusion. However, he simply cupped her face and gently pulled her back into the kiss. Gradually, she lost herself in the moment, no longer caring about how out of the blue this intimate display from Tony was. As such, she didn’t say a word as he pulled back from the kiss and slowly unwrapped her towel, letting it drop to the floor as he simply stared deeply into her eyes, and she stared back into his.

  


She wrapped her arms tightly around him as he pulled her back into the kiss, molding her body against his own as he gently led her back to the bed.

  


He truly was running out of time. All of his money and all of his brains, and none of it made any difference. He was dying, and there was nothing he could do about it. The palladium from his reactor had been slowly poisoning his body ever since that day in the cave when he first put it in, and finally, after almost five years, his time was almost up.

  


However, he had no intention of spending his last days fruitlessly searching for solutions that he already knew weren’t there to be found. He had spent years searching for a way to replace the palladium in his reactor, and all of his searching had turned up the same answer: that there was none.

  


But that didn’t mean he simply had to sit quietly in a corner waiting for death to take him. His time may have been running out, but he was going to spend what little he had with those he cared about, like his ridiculous son currently snoring on the stairs, or this amazing, beautiful woman that he loved, and for some unfathomable reason, seemed to love him in return.

  


And so, as he drank in Pepper’s touch, and was caressed by her soft, loving moans, he wasn’t thinking about dying.

  


He was thinking about _living_.

  


And he was happy.

  


…

  


“… Oh, hey, did I mention I was making you CEO?”

  


…

  


“You _WHAT?!_ ”

  


Well, _now_ he was thinking about dying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I hope you enjoyed the chapter :) A quick note about Tony’s blood toxicity level, the reason he’s not already dead from palladium poisoning is that the rate at which it rises in my story differs heavily from how it’s portrayed in Iron Man 2, which I think is a good thing, since the movie indicated that his toxicity level rose at a rate of about 5% per day, which is just insane. At that rate, he would have died before ever making it out of the cave in Iron Man 1, since it would only take 20 days to reach 100% and kill him. Instead, my portrayal will be closer to the rate at which his toxicity level rose prior to the start of the movie, where it was only at 19% after something like a year since he first implanted the reactor in his chest in Iron Man 1. At that rate (~0.052% per day), it would take about five years and three+ months to reach 100% and kill him, which is roughly what I’ve shown (though that’s honestly just a happy coincidence). And all of that is really just a very long and rambling way of saying that I have no life and have put WAY too much thought into this.


	5. From Russia, with a distinct lack of love

A few days later, the sound of dull, cloth-damped smacks against flesh could be heard echoing throughout the vast Malibu mansion, as was not uncommon.

  


“C’mon, Happy, get in there! This is embarrassing! I’ve got fifty bucks on this!”

  


This sound of jeering was also fairly typical during these times.

  


Abruptly, the chorus of smacks came to an abrupt halt as a loud, dull thud took their place.

  


“Dammit!” Tony yelled in disappointment as Happy groaned painfully, his face pressed into the floor of an at-home boxing ring.

  


“Tony! He’s cheating again!” Happy complained like a child as he painfully leveraged himself back to his feet.

  


“Am not,” Harry complained mildly, though with a gloating expression on his face. “You tripped and fell.”

  


“You sweeping my legs is not me tripping and falling!” Happy insisted to a teenager who seemed far more interested in adjusting his sparring gloves than in answering these patently unjust accusations of cheating.

  


“Sweeping the legs is a perfectly valid move,” he rebutted.

  


“Not in boxing it isn’t!” Happy insisted. “I’m supposed to be teaching you clean and fair _boxing_ , not street fighting or whatever it is you keep pulling out of your big bag of cheating tricks, you cheater!”

  


Harry gave the man an innocently curious look. “But if you’re supposed to be teaching me boxing, then what were you doing on the ground?”

  


Butter would not melt in his mouth.

  


“Oh, you little brat!” Happy yelled, putting up gloves.

  


“Yeah! Get ‘im, Happy!” Tony goaded from the sidelines.

  


Once again, the sound of padded fists smacking into flesh resumed, and also once again, it ended much the same.

  


“See? He did it again!” Happy complained from the floor of the ring.

  


“You’re the one who told me to improve my footwork,” Harry reminded the man.

  


“That doesn’t mean kicking me in the face!” Happy petulantly nitpicked.

  


“Oh. Well how was I supposed to know? You’re the one who was unclear in your instructions,” Harry retorted, snickering as the man’s face once again gained the tomato-red tinge that he found so funny.

  


“Oh, I’ll show you unclear!” Happy threatened as he once again raised his fists.

  


“By the by, did I tell you that Harry blamed you for the whole cars-in-my-living-room-floor incident?” Tony mentioned, shamelessly provoking Happy.

  


Happy shot the teen an even more irate look.

  


“Well … I blamed Dum-E first,” Harry explained in a decidedly lackluster defense.

  


And this was why Pepper entered the room to see Harry and Happy wrestling on the mat, rules completely ignored by both the incensed boxing instructor and the snickering teen.

  


Pepper sighed. “Way to be the mature party here, Happy. It’s inspiring.”

  


“Well he started it!” he informed her, though with a slightly strained voice due to Harry holding him in a headlock at the time.

  


“And you should know better than to let him goad you,” she insisted in a tone that was just pure mom.

  


“Yeah, you really should,” Harry told the man as he let him go. “Shame on you.”

  


The still red-faced Happy avoided eye contact with everyone as he smoothed his clothes.

  


“ _Cheater_ ,” he muttered to the teen one last time as he stepped out of the ring, dignity in tatters.

  


“Hmm. So I guess Harry won then,” Pepper observed.

  


“He didn–!” Happy began to complain, before sighing and just giving up.

  


Tony, meanwhile, simply hung his head in disappointment and held up a fifty-dollar-bill.

  


“Why, thank you,” Pepper told him brightly as she snagged the fifty, smugness etched into every line of her face. Sniffing the piece of not-hard-earned cash, she sighed in satisfaction as she stepped over to the side of the boxing ring and gave Harry a fist bump.

  


Tony glared at Happy as the smirking duo gloated over Pepper’s new winnings.

  


Happy’s expression could only be called a pout as he simply continued to towel himself off silently.

  


“Well, I see those martial arts lessons you’ve been sneaking off to are paying dividends,” Tony commented to Harry casually, though still casting a shrewd eye over at the teen.

  


Harry simply drank from his water bottle without answering, though he shot Tony an unimpressed glance for the blatant fishing attempt while he was at it. However, in truth, Tony wasn’t completely wrong in his guess. They did do some martial arts training at their lab from time to time. Mostly when they were tired of bashing their heads against brick walls with their tech and needed a break.

  


So fairly regularly, actually, now that he thought about it.

  


As Harry cast an eye over Happy’s panting, sweating form, he also had to admit that he had a lot more fun at those other lessons. His instructor there was much prettier.

  


At least, he had enjoyed them before he got kicked out of their lab because of this whole unreasonable “Ninety minutes of sleep a night isn’t enough!” thing.

  


Though if he was being honest, it was kinda nice to look into a mirror and not see a raccoon staring back at him. Hell, he had almost forgotten that the “whites” of his eyes could actually be anything other than red and bloodshot. So maybe it was a good thing that he was backing off on some of his projects and actually getting some rest.

  


Not that he’d ever admit that to her, of course. She’d get all smirky and “I told you so” about it, and that was his shtick, dammit.

  


_Of course, I never told her I’d back away from_ all _of my projects_ , he somewhat pettily reflected, running his fingers over the narrow arc reactor bracers currently wrapped around his biceps. _I can’t afford to, after all_. His face tightened in a grimace. _Some of them are just too important_.

  


“So where’d you run off to?” Tony asked Pepper, the sudden sound of his voice making Harry realize he had gotten lost in thought again.

  


“I was letting the notary in,” Pepper explained. “She has the last of the paperwork for you to sign.”

  


It was then that everyone finally noticed the other woman standing in the doorway. Which was … fairly surprising, to say the least, because … well …

  


“ _Wow_ ,” Harry accidentally but very accurately summarized.

  


Pepper turned and looked at him with a raised eyebrow and a look of extreme amusement at overhearing his muttered slip.

  


“I didn’t say that,” he less than truthfully denied.

  


As Pepper kept staring at him, the increasingly awkward-feeling teen eventually took another swig from his water bottle as an excuse to break eye contact.

  


And to hide the sudden red in his cheeks, of course. Though, given how Pepper chuckled as she headed back towards Tony, he suspected that he achieved only marginal success in this attempt.

  


Thankfully, this entire encounter seemed to go unnoticed by the stunning red-headed woman with the file folder standing by the doorway. Of course, this may have had something to do with the fact that she was currently being accosted by Tony.

  


“What’s your name?” he asked the woman while less than subtly ogling her.

  


“Rushman. Natalie Rushman,” she answered, her soft-spoken tone and gentle expression a curious mix of professional and … demure, almost.

  


Tony, by contrast, was still as eminently Tony as ever.

  


“Where you from?” he asked next.

  


“Legal,” she answered, ostensibly evasive, but with her innocent expression saying she simply misunderstood the question. “I need your impression,” she continued.

  


“Quiet reserve,” Tony immediately mused as he looked at her speculatively. “I don’t know, you have an old soul …”

  


“I meant your fingerprint,” she corrected him with a small smile, opening her folder and holding it out to him.

  


Harry, meanwhile, shook his head and chuckled as he watched their interaction.

  


_I’m often amazed by Tony’s stupidity_ , _but I am in absolute_ awe _of his boldness_ , Harry reflected in amusement as he watched the man pretty blatantly flirting with the stunning notary all while the woman he was dating stood right there with a decidedly unamused look on her face. Judging by her expression, it was funny when your pseudo adoptive son thought a woman was attractive, but it was apparently less charming when your boyfriend did so.

  


A lesson Tony had evidently not learned yet.

  


“You ever boxed before, Natalie?” Tony asked, ignoring the paperwork.

  


“I have, yes,” she answered, still with her small, somewhat flirty smile. Harry, though, felt his eyebrows rise at her answer, as she was giving off an extremely gentle and peaceful vibe that didn’t seem to mesh at all with the image of her boxing.

  


“Great. Now could you do me just one quick favor and go kick that kid’s scrawny ass?” Tony asked her while pointing at the ring. “That’d be great, thanks.”

  


Harry was jolted out of staring at the woman upon finally registering the man’s words. _Wait, do what now?_

  


“Oh, you can _not_ be serious,” Pepper groaned in exasperation as Natalie looked back and forth between Tony and the increasingly alarmed and embarrassed teen still standing in the boxing ring. “She’s here for you to sign paperwork, not push her into joining your little fight club.”

  


“Objection overruled,” Tony countered, ignoring Harry’s flushed glare as he walked over and lifted one of the ropes of the ring. “If it pleases the court? Which it does,” he prompted the surprisingly non-awkward-looking notary.

  


“Are you completely allergic to behaving professionally?” Pepper tiredly asked Tony.

  


“Obviously. Are you just tuning it?” he responded matter-of-factly.

  


“It’s fine,” Natalie assured Pepper, handing her the file folder.

  


“I’m sorry. He’s really eccentric,” Pepper apologized as Natalie stepped towards the ring.

  


_Oh, he’s a dead man is what he is_ , Harry mentally vowed as the woman stepped out of her shoes and climbed into the ring. However, he found himself promptly distracted from his thoughts of vengeance as he caught a glimpse of Natalie’s extremely generous cleavage through the top of her partly unbuttoned blouse as she bent between the ropes.

  


His neck and cheeks, of course, decided that the only logical response to such a sight was to give off a deep crimson glow that was probably visible from three counties away, much to his annoyance.

  


Tony’s snickering said that he certainly spotted it, at least, which was just … _perfect_.

  


“ _Double or nothing_ ,” Harry overheard Tony whisper to Pepper as he pulled out another fifty, apparently willing to capitalize on the hormone-riddled teen’s clear distraction and awkwardness.

  


“ _You’re on_ ,” Pepper whispered back, belying all her talk about Tony’s immaturity.

  


Rolling his eyes, the embarrassed teen decided to focus instead on the gorgeous redhead currently stretching her arms and flashing him a small, mysterious smile.

  


Unlike Pepper’s straight, strawberry blonde locks, Natalie’s were a dark, near auburn red that fell to her shoulders in gentle curls. She was slightly shorter than average, too, making her of a height with the sixteen-year-old Harry himself. She also had pale, almost porcelain skin that contrasted fetchingly with her dark red hair and her full lips, still smiling her gentle, inscrutable smile.

  


As for her eyes–

  


Harry’s thoughts came to a grinding halt as he looked into her large, blue-green eyes, which were blinking at him innocently even now as she squared up her shoulders and lifted her fists in a boxer’s stance.

  


Those eyes were beautiful, without a doubt. Their color resembled the shade of two deep pools of water when the setting sun strikes them just so, and you can’t tell whether they’re the clean, innocent blue of the sky, or the dark, wild green hue of the sea, and instead, for that brief, interminable moment, they seem like some impossible mix of the two.

  


That wasn’t why he was suddenly staring at her so hard, though.

  


It was because he had seen those eyes before.

  


He was jerked out of his thoughts a second time by her fist lightly, but painfully, bopping him in the nose.

  


“Ooh, the kid takes a hit right out the gate,” Tony commentated.

  


“Oh, no, that’s terrible. I hope he’s okay,” Happy commented in a bland, utterly flat tone that almost made his words seem disingenuous for some reason.

  


Natalie, meanwhile, shot Harry a faint, challenging smirk that created a slight crack in her gentle, innocent expression.

  


_Alright, let’s do this then_ , he mentally responded as he squared up and prepared to take things seriously.

  


It … didn’t help much.

  


Or at all, really.

  


He was a relatively decent fighter, to be sure. Between the boxing lessons here with Happy and the martial arts training he did in the warehouse lab, he had picked up more than a few tricks.

  


They just didn’t seem to make even the slightest bit of difference.

  


Natalie swayed out of the way of punches as if she had seen them coming since last week. She retaliated with quick, light jabs that broke through gaps in his defenses that she practically seemed to command to open herself, leaving aching bruises on his face or stinging welts on his torso. Hell, the only time he managed to make contact was when he suddenly switched from boxing to martial arts mid-bout, dropping low and sweeping her legs out from under her in what was absolutely an illegal move in a boxing match, whatever he claimed in order to pester Happy.

  


Unlike Happy, though, she didn’t end up sprawled flat. Instead, even as she fell, she twisted her body so that she landed on her hands and shoulder blades, already halfway through a kip-up. However, she added a certain flair to the move that Harry wasn’t familiar with, and didn’t appreciate at all. Rather than simply kicking up into the air to flip herself back onto her feet, she managed to angle her kick to nail him directly in the forehead with her heel, sending him staggering back even as she smoothly and effortlessly regained her feet.

  


“Hey, look at that. The cheater got out-cheated,” Happy narrated in clear satisfaction. “This is turning out to be a good day after all.”

  


At that point, Natalie apparently decided to end the fight, since it was clearly nothing other than her casual amusement and polite willingness to humor him that had made it last even as long as it had.

  


She certainly decided on a creative means to end it, though.

  


Running towards him, she leaped into the air and wrapped her legs around his neck while grabbing one of his wrists. Twisting her body, she flipped the shell-shocked teen onto the ground and kept him pinned by holding his arm locked and keeping her well-muscled thighs wrapped tightly around his head. Incidentally, however, this also ended up forcing his face … elsewhere.

  


He thought he may have blown a synapse or two.

  


_So my face is here now,_ he tried to process. _That’s … certainly an interesting turn of events_.

  


Tony phrased it a bit more bluntly, of course.

  


“Well, what do you know? Kid got to third base. Not bad.”

  


“Tony!” Pepper reflexively yelped in embarrassment as Natalie unwrapped her curvy legs from around Harry’s head and regained her feet.

  


As she calmly brushed her clothes smooth and climbed out of the ring, however, Harry decided to just … lie there for a bit. Maybe allow the blood-flow to return to his brain.

  


“You okay there, Harry?” Pepper asked the stunned teen in some concern.

  


He simply gave her a shaky thumbs-up.

  


“Ah, youth,” Tony sighed wistfully as he looked at his dazed adoptive son. “As for you,” he turned to Natalie, “how would you like a job?”

  


Harry started jerkily clambering back to his feet just in time to see Natalie shoot Tony a bemused glance. “I _have_ a job. I work in legal.”

  


“Boring!” Tony declared. “I’m talking a much better job.”

  


“As what?” Natalie asked curiously, though given Pepper’s pained temple-rubbing, she had already realized where he was going with this, and she wasn’t impressed.

  


Tony grinned. “As Harry’s babysitter!” he told her proudly.

  


Given Pepper’s look of shock, this was not, in fact, where she had been expecting him to go with this, which made her only a little less flabbergasted than Harry himself.

  


Natalie, calm and collected as ever, simply raised an eyebrow at the man, which Harry was starting to gather was essentially her equivalent of open-mouthed astonishment.

  


“Oh, and you’d also be his new sparring instructor and my assistant,” Tony finished casually.

  


“I– … you– … what?” Pepper stammered, apparently at a loss for words.

  


“Well, with you becoming CEO, I’m going to need a new assistant,” he explained to her.

  


“Okay, and ignoring the fact that I have three perfectly suitable candidates already lined up and ready to meet with you about that,” Pepper began, “how on earth does that … just … _what_?”

  


“Okay, so you know how beating your kids is frowned upon?” Tony asked, leaving everyone reeling at segue-less jump in the conversation. “Wait, that is still frowned upon, right?” Tony suddenly paused and asked Pepper with an uncertain look on his face.

  


“Yes, it’s generally still frowned upon,” Pepper answered, still looking bewildered by the utterly rail-less train of thought.

  


Tony grimaced. “Thought so,” he muttered in disappointment. “Well, I’ve found a workaround to that little bit of hippy nonsense,” Tony informed them all brightly as he gestured towards the boxing ring. “Outsourcing!”

  


Pepper sighed. “And as always, we are left trembling in awe at your parenting prowess,” she dryly commented.

  


“Tell me about it,” Harry muttered.

  


“Well, it’s worked perfectly up until now,” Tony continued explaining. “Harry smashed my car? Boxing lesson! Harry refused to go to a party? Boxing lesson! Harry painted the Iron Man suit in temperature-reactant compounds that would turn me pink in the middle of a firefight? Double boxing lesson!”

  


“In my defense,” Harry interrupted, “I didn’t mix the paint just right. I was actually going for more of a mauve there.”

  


“But then Happy the Slacker here,” Tony continued, ignoring Harry, “just had to go and start losing.”

  


“I haven’t been losing!” Happy insisted. “He’s fighting dirty! That’s not the same as winning!”

  


“There there,” Tony patted the man on the shoulder. “It’s okay. We don’t think too much less of you for losing.”

  


Happy threw his hands up in exasperation.

  


“Ms Rushman here, on the other hand,” Tony continued, “seems like she’ll actually be able to kick Harry’s butt with some regularity!” Tony paused. “Oh, and, uh, teach him valuable life skills and help him hone his body and yadda yadda yadda. Point is, Hap’s out, and she’s in!”

  


Happy seemed both annoyed by his demotion and relieved at the thought of not having to deal with any more of Harry’s “cheating,” along with decidedly pleased at the thought of watching Natalie stomp him like she had today.

  


“And the ‘babysitting’?” Natalie asked curiously, though with a certain measure of amusement as well at all of this insanity.

  


“That, Ms Rushman, will undoubtedly be the most trying part of the job, and by far the most important,” Tony somberly informed her. “You see, Harry here has some truly terrible and unnatural habits that he needs rid of, and I’m afraid I just can’t pull this off alone.”

  


Natalie’s brows furrowed in confusion and slight concern as he hesitated to continue.

  


“You see … he’s …,” Tony paused to take in a hiccoughing breath, “… _a workaholic_.”

  


By his tone and expression, he might as well have declared that Harry was a hardcore drug user.

  


“Oh, for the love of God,” Pepper groaned, rubbing at her temples.

  


“Well, it’s true, honey. We both know it. We can’t keep denying it any longer,” Tony told her, grasping her hand in a show of comforting support before turning back to the face-palming teen to continue his intervention. “And Harry, you have a problem. You need help. But it’s okay. There’s no shame in you having this problem.” He paused. “Or … well, there’s a _bit_ of shame in it, but the important thing is that you don’t have to deal with this alone. We’re here for you. We’ll get you through this troubled time.”

  


Harry gave Natalie a look that said, ‘ _Do you see what I put up with?_ ’

  


“So … you want me to walk him through workaholic rehab?” Natalie translated with a bemused look.

  


“I want you to force him to have some fun, and to kick his butt when he tries slipping into the whole ‘working for hours and hours and hours without a break’ thing that he does,” Tony promptly explained.

  


She raised an eyebrow at him. “And by fun, you mean …,” Natalie prompted him.

  


“I don’t know … push him to hack into Hammer Industries to change all their passwords to dick jokes and flood their servers with gay porn. Goad him into trying to jump into the dolphin tank at Sea World. Or, hell, make him go mini-golfing. Anything! He carries the Stark name. It’s about time he started being worthy of it!” Tony gained a thoughtful look as he finished. “On second thought, don’t do the mini-golfing thing. There will be no mini-golfers under this roof. But all the other stuff goes!”

  


As Pepper continued massaging her throbbing temples, an amused Natalie gave Harry a glance that said she understood what his previous look meant.

  


Finally, Pepper seemed recovered enough to cut in. “Okay, Tony, we all appreciate your … _eccentricities_ ,” she told him, “but Natalie here is a notary with our legal department. I’m sure she has no interest in abandoning her entire career path to be a martial arts instructor and to play ‘Let’s see what terrible decisions we can get Harry to make today!’”

  


Natalie nodded in agreement with the woman’s very reasonable points.

  


Tony simply looked at Pepper for a moment before turning back to Natalie. “I’ll pay you lots more money,” he offered.

  


Natalie looked at him speculatively. “How much is ‘lots more’?”

  


Pepper groaned upon spotting Tony’s victorious grin. “Oh, please don’t encourage this,” she begged Natalie.

  


“Too late. Already encouraged,” Tony declared before wrapping his arm around Natalie’s shoulders. “Now, let’s talk numbers,” he told her as he started leading her out of the boxing room.

  


“I do still need your fingerprint on the transfer of management paperwork, you know,” she told him.

  


“Oh, we can get to all that boring stuff later,” Tony assured her as Pepper and Happy scurried after them both.

  


“It’s fine! Don’t worry about me!” Harry called after them. “I’ll just stand here while you lot plan out my life! That’s cool!”

  


“Thanks!” Tony’s distant voice drifted back.

  


After several moments alone in the room, however, Harry’s embarrassed, petulant expression faded as if it had never been, leaving nothing but stony seriousness in its place.

  


“Jo,” he said, tapping the tiny device in his ear.

  


“Yes, Harry?” his VI responded.

  


Harry’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the empty doorway. “Find out everything you can about a Natalie Rushman. I want a file on absolutely everything there is on this woman. Quickly and quietly.”

  


“You know, I detected an elevated heart rate and certain thermal spikes in your body when you were looking at this woman,” Jo mentioned. “I hope you’re not making me a party to some creepy stalker-type crush on poor Ms Natalie Rushman.”

  


Harry snorted. “Hardly,” he assured her. “In fact, I’ll be surprised if that’s actually her name.” Reaching into a pocket, he pulled out a plain, unremarkable cellphone that he picked from the woman’s pocket when she had him pinned on the ground. As it turned out, some skills just kinda stuck with a guy. “When you’re done collecting whatever data there is on this woman, including hiring dates here at Stark Enterprises, I want you to search through whatever older cached versions of our databases you can get a hold of.” Reaching up, he slid the narrow arc reactor shackles down from his upper arms to their usual spot wrapped around his forearms, the advanced devices unfolding and re-assuming their larger default forms in the process.

  


“And I will be searching these cached data files for …” Jo prompted.

  


Extending a cord from one of the bracers, he plugged it into a slot in the phone. “Inconsistencies,” he told her as he cloned the phone’s data. “I’ll be surprised if there’s any record of her working here that’s actually more than a couple of weeks old, whatever her files say about her actual date of hiring. If our systems have been hacked to say she’s a long-time employee, then the older cached data should let you spot this.” As the bracer beeped at him, he unplugged the phone and climbed out of the ring, dropping the phone just outside the ropes as if it had fallen out of the woman’s pocket while climbing through them.

  


“And I’m sure there is an entirely rational and in no way insane explanation as to your arguable paranoia about this woman,” Jo sarcastically asserted.

  


Harry’s suspicious gaze returned to the doorway. “It’s her eyes,” he replied.

  


“… okay, so I may have been wrong,” Jo admitted.

  


“I recognize them,” he explained. “From back in my Spectre days.” His gaze fell to the bracer still processing the phone’s data. “I saw them every single day back then. Every time I looked in a mirror. They were focused, and calculating, always scanning for weaknesses to exploit … or to create. Constantly drinking in every movement and every detail for whatever was needed to complete the objective, and all while never giving away anything in return, no matter how your lips were smiling.” His suspicious gaze returned to the doorway. “She looked like I did every time I was sizing up a mark.”

  


“You think she was planning to rob us?” Jo asked in surprise.

  


Harry sighed. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe it’s nothing. In fact, I hope it _is_ nothing. I much prefer the possibility that I’m just being paranoid.”

  


“And if you’re not?” she asked quietly.

  


“Then she might be a thief casing a target,” he replied. “Or a corporate saboteur positioning herself to cripple the company. Or a spy trying to get her hands on company information to sell to the highest bidder.” He grimaced again. “I really don’t know.”

  


Jo was quiet for a moment. “I’ll gather all the info I can find on her,” she promised.

  


“Thank you, Jo. And please hurry,” he told her. “If she’s a threat to my family, I need to know soon.”

  


“I’ll do what I can,” she assured him. After a moment, however, she spoke up again, this time in a tone that was both serious and playful. “And I assume you’ll be keeping a close eye on her in the meantime?”

  


“Of course I will,” he told her. “You know … for safety and all that. Gotta protect my family, right?”

  


“Mm-hmm. And this has nothing to do with the clear signs of arousal I detected in your body when she was here?” she asked teasingly.

  


He grinned. “What? Just because I’m keeping an eye on a possibly dangerous woman doesn’t mean I can’t check her out while I’m at it. It’s called multi-tasking.”

  


“Really? Because I thought it was called thinking with your penis,” she countered.

  


“Nope. Definitely multi-tasking. It’s incredibly useful,” he assured her as he stepped out of the room and headed off to get cleaned up.

  


“So’s a cold shower,” she told him dryly.

  


* * *

  


**Monaco Grand Prix, a few days later**

  


Harry was bombarded on all sides by a dense crush of people as he followed Tony, Pepper, Happy, and Natalie into a lavish hotel restaurant overlooking the famous Circuit de Monaco, where the pulse-pounding Formula One race was soon to commence. However, despite how the massive crowds were absolutely screaming their heads off, whether to attract the attention of the famous Starks, to celebrate the race they were about to witness, or simply just to make noise, Harry heard none of it thanks to the small device on his belt, which afforded him a blessed bubble of silence that he latched on to like flotsam in a storm-tossed sea.

  


Wrapped safely in his silent bubble, he continued to follow his family, all the while staring intensely at Natalie’s back, his gaze shrouded by his lightly green-tinted sunglasses.

  


“You know, if you’re trying to see through her dress, I think you might have to use some tech to do it. I don’t think you can achieve x-ray vision with just the power of a good staring, even if you certainly seem to be giving it a good effort,” Jo’s voice teased in his ear.

  


“I’m staring at her because I don’t trust her,” he reminded Jo for the millionth time.

  


“And you think her ass holds the secret to unveiling her diabolical plans?” Jo teased.

  


With a jerk, Harry tore his gaze free from the woman’s incredibly shapely posterior and deliberately ignored how her tight salmon dress showcased her utterly voluptuous hourglass figure.

  


“It could,” he weakly defended.

  


“You know, if I might remind you, we didn’t actually find anything at all to suggest that Ms Rushman is anything other than what she says she is. She has been working in the legal department of Stark Enterprises for the last three years, confirmed by both our active records and the older cached data I could find.”

  


“Yeah, and I bet many of her _colleagues_ would be very surprised to hear about this, as I’m sure we’ll discover when I finally get the chance to meet with some of them,” Harry muttered. “But still, the only thing that record stuff really proves is that if she _is_ working with someone, they’re incredibly detailed and thorough, not that she isn’t working with anyone,” he countered.

  


“And the phone that you stole from the poor woman?” Jo asked next.

  


“Hey, _borrowed_ ,” he corrected. “She got it back.”

  


“And the results of this questionably legal maneuver were …,” Jo prompted, denying his attempts at sidetracking.

  


“… Inconclusive,” he muttered reluctantly.

  


“There was nothing on it,” she clarified for him, not buying into his evasiveness. “No mysterious phone numbers, no evil viruses, not a single ominous text messages. It was clean.”

  


“Proving only that she knows what she’s doing and isn’t sloppy enough to leave a trace!” Harry stubbornly insisted.

  


“Yeah, yeah, go back to checking her ass for evil plans written in invisible ink, Denial Boy,” she told him, an eye roll practically audible in her voice. Which was impressive, given that the digital being didn’t actually have eyes.

  


Sadly, before he could do just that, they finally arrived at their table. Or rather, they arrived at _a_ table, and Tony seemed to be casually insisting that it be theirs, reservations be damned.

  


This was just one of the many luxuries one could get away with when they were obscenely rich.

  


With that, Harry deactivated the device on his belt, allowing sound to come crashing back.

  


“And here we are,” Tony told them all, gesturing to the commandeered corner table set by two large windows overlooking the race course. “This is perfect. You’ll have a perfect view of the track,” he added, half to himself.

  


Harry’s brow furrowed. “You mean ‘we’, right?” he asked.

  


“Hmm? Oh, of course I do,” Tony assured him as Pepper took a seat and ordered a drink. “And look at you, kid, all here and not complaining or working or anything. If someone didn’t know better, they’d say you finally got the stick out of your ass and were ready to have some fun.”

  


“And someone might also say that you were planning on doing something stupid in the near future,” Harry countered, causing Tony to go very still for a moment. “… though of course, that’s just a general guess,” Harry admitted. As Tony seemed to relax slightly, however, the suspicious teen continued. “Still, it would probably be a good idea to tell Pepper to keep a close eye on you for a while. You know, just in case.”

  


Tony’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Tell you what, you go do that, and I’ll tell Happy and Natalie to prepare for a two-on-one boxing lesson later. Street rules only. You know, just to be sure your lessons are really sticking with you.”

  


Harry grimaced. “Well played.”

  


“I thought so,” Tony boasted, clapping him on the shoulder. “Now, I’m going to … um, run to the restroom for a bit, so why don’t you sit down and keep Pepper company. _Quiet_ company. And have a drink or something.”

  


Harry gave him a flat look. “I’m a minor, remember?”

  


“Okay, have a small drink then,” Tony compromised. “I’m sure Natalie will bring you one.” As Tony began walking away, he turned back. “Oh, and speaking of Natalie …” He flicked his smirking gaze back and forth between Harry and Natalie before giving Harry an exaggerated encouraging wink, followed by a double thumbs-up.

  


Harry narrowed his eyes and mimed shaving off a stupid goatee.

  


Chuckling, Tony turned and left.

  


With a sigh, Harry returned to the table, taking a seat between Pepper and Natalie.

  


“Where’s Tony?” Pepper asked in confusion, looking around to spot him in the crowded restaurant.

  


“Oh, he had to go do a thing,” Harry flippantly explained as he picked up a menu.

  


“A thing?” Pepper asked, even more confused.

  


In response, he simply gave her a flat look.

  


“Oh, lord,” she groaned, kicking back the rest of her glass of wine like a shot of whiskey.

  


“Yeah,” he commiserated.

  


“Something I missed?” Natalie asked, her brow furrowed quizzically.

  


Harry hesitated, but didn’t really see anything wrong with explaining. “When Tony sneaks off to do something by himself, it’s generally not a sign that good decisions are about to be made. It’s mostly just stupidity and … well, that’s just about it.”

  


“You forgot the headaches it creates for me,” Pepper mentioned, refilling her wine glass all the way to the brim. “I somehow doubt they’re going to be getting any smaller now that I’m CEO instead of his assistant.” She carefully lifted her glass to Natalie in a toast. “Good luck,” she bleakly wished Tony’s new assistant before starting to chug her wine.

  


“I see,” Natalie replied, her expression as inscrutable as ever.

  


“Not yet, you don’t,” Harry informed her, returning to his menu. “But you will.”

  


As if on cue, various mutters and exclamations of surprise started to move through the eager crowd in the restaurant, causing Harry to lift his gaze to see what the deal was.

  


“Oh, speak of the devil,” he commented mildly upon spotting the source of the excitement in one of the many television monitors tuned in to the race about to start. There, large as life and reckless as ever, Tony Stark stood in front of the Stark race-car dressed in a racing suit and clearly planning on replacing the poor Stark driver in the unbelievably dangerous high-speed race that was about to commence. “ _Child_ ,” Harry muttered, shaking his head and returning to his menu.

  


“Oh, _no_ ,” Pepper breathed in horror upon spotting this development.

  


“Is he driving?” Natalie asked aloud, a measure of surprise audible in her voice, which was fairly significant coming from the extremely calm and collected woman.

  


“Of course he’s driving,” Harry answered, still scanning through his menu. “I really don’t know why any of us are surprised. It’s Tony.”

  


“This cannot happen,” Pepper declared, both resolute and panicked. “Natalie! Where’s Happy?”

  


“He’s just outside,” Natalie answered, causing Pepper to jump out of her seat and hurry towards the door. Natalie started to rise out of her seat to follow her, but hesitated upon spotting the still casually seated Harry. “Aren’t you coming?” she asked him.

  


He raised an eyebrow at her. “To do what? Try and drag Tony out of a car that’s going to be moving at something like two hundred miles an hour in about twenty seconds? Seems a bit pointless. We’d probably be better off just sitting tight and ordering Pepper another bottle of wine.”

  


“Fair point,” Natalie admitted, returning to her seat and signaling a waiter to do just that.

  


Pepper made it back to their table with Happy just in time for the final countdown for the start of the race, their attempt to somehow make this not happen clearly a failure, because front and center in a nearby screen was the Stark Formula One car with Tony shooting the camera a peace sign from behind the wheel.

  


“Here’s hoping all those speeding tickets he’s gotten over the years pay off,” Happy muttered as Pepper grabbed a cloth napkin and started twisting it into knots in her anxious hands.

  


The final light went off, and with a thunderous squeal of high-powered engines, they were off.

  


“Oh, God. He’s going to give me an ulcer,” Pepper predicted as she watched the cars go screaming down the track and whipping around turns in the nearby TV, the drivers’ helmets appearing downright pitiful in the face of the incredibly dangerous speeds they were moving at.

  


To Tony’s credit, though, he was actually doing extremely well for a non-professional driver. They watched on the monitors as his blue and white car whipped around his competitors and forced himself closer and closer to the front of the pack.

  


Oddly enough, Pepper did not seem at all comforted by her boyfriend’s recklessly aggressive driving tactics, given how she started chugging her wine.

  


At this point, the cars had reached the track just outside the restaurant, causing the windows and tables to vibrate as if under an earthquake as they went screaming past, and sure enough, one of those vaguely car-shaped blurs was colored blue and white, and thus held a reckless billionaire who was doomed to be the victim of justifiable homicide at Pepper’s hands when the race was over.

  


As Harry returned his attention to the monitors, however, something odd caught his eye when the camera tracked a little wide on one of the shots.

  


Narrowing his eyes, Harry stood from the table and approached the monitor, unbuttoning and rolling up the sleeve of his expensive black button-up shirt as he did.

  


“Harry?” Natalie asked curiously.

  


He didn’t answer her. Lifting his arm, he pointed his advanced reactor bracer at the monitor, freezing the broadcast and causing several of the viewers around him to groan and curse at him in French.

  


“Harry, what are you doing?” Pepper asked now as several patrons around them either glared at Harry or simply shuffled off to one of the dozens of other monitors in the restaurant.

  


Harry paid none of them any mind. Frowning, he rotated his hand, causing the video to rewind until he reached the part that had grabbed his attention.

  


Happy, Pepper, and Natalie were crowded around him at this point, trying to parse out the meaning behind the teen’s bizarre behavior. He ignored them, though. He was busy staring at a strange shape just barely visible on top of one of the rooftops at the very edge of the video.

  


Dragging his thumb and forefinger apart, his bracer forced the screen to zoom in on that part of the image, causing the now blurry and heavily pixelated shape to fill the screen as his onboard computer worked to clear up the image.

  


When it finally succeeded, a chorus of gasps sounded from the watching crowd.

  


“ _Oh my God_ ,” the wide-eyed teen whispered, an icy chill of horror freezing his spine.

  


A shaky-looking Pepper stepped up beside him, color completely gone from her cheeks. “I-Is that …?”

  


Without another word, Harry turned and bolted out the door.

  


He didn’t know who that was. He didn’t know where they had got it from. But he knew Tony was going to need backup.

  


After all, he somehow doubted that someone was lurking on a rooftop in an enormous Iron-Man-type suit just to watch a race.

  


* * *

  


Inside that very suit, a hate-filled but eminently focused man narrowed his eyes as his suit’s digital display zoomed in on one of the cars racing towards him, and on the name emblazoned upon it.

  


‘ _Stark_ ’

  


Behind the heavy metal mask of his armor, Ivan Vanko smiled. Finally, after so long, after so much waiting and suffering and loss, _finally_ , he would have what was promised to him.

  


He would have vengeance on the family that had destroyed his own.

  


Rising from his kneeling position on the rooftop, he activated the thrusters under his boots and along the back of his armor. The massive booming explosion as his suit lifted into the air seemed more fitting for a rocket launch than anything as his thrusters strained to make the exceedingly heavy and bulky suit fly, but he hadn’t scrimped on thruster output, and his armor’s power source was nearly unparalleled in the modern world, so fly his suit did.

  


Below him, he could hear the crowds shout in joy or terror as he thundered past them, but he paid them no mind, just as he ignored the armed guards scattered all around the event. None of them could stop him. Not even Iron Man could stop him.

  


And the pitifully unarmored Tony Stark behind the wheel of a Formula One car certainly couldn’t.

  


Deactivating his thrusters, Vanko landed with a ground-shaking crash in the middle of the racetrack, broken lengths of asphalt crumbling or lifting out of the ground around his crater.

  


He paid this no mind either, just as he ignored the cars screaming past him, and how several lost control as they passed over the broken ground, causing them to veer wildly into each other or the fences around the racetrack.

  


As the track behind him was wracked with explosions from the ongoing high-speed pileup, Vanko simply activated his suit’s primary weapons, causing two long, glowing blue heavy cords arcing with electricity to extend from the forearms of his suit, leaving long, glassy melted stretches of asphalt in their wake and sending small bolts of electricity to jump and electrify the fences on either side.

  


As another car raced towards him, his suit rapidly provided targeting and trajectory data. Swinging his arm, it was child’s play to send one long electrified whip crackling through the air to slice through the front end of the car like butter.

  


As the bisected remains of the car flew past him to join the wreckage behind him, and in the process threatening to collide with the emergency service workers struggling to free the drivers from the pileup, the pulley system in his shoulder segment activated, retracting the whip and pulling it back into position to use again.

  


Once more, a car raced towards him. And yet again, he casually sent one of his whips snapping through the air to carve into the speeding vehicle, this time slicing it from front to back along one side, causing two mini explosions of released air as the tires were eviscerated, with sent the larger part of the car spiraling through the air as the smaller remnants slid along the asphalt. Vanko casually stepped to one side to avoid them.

  


As his suit beeped at him, however, Vanko grinned.

  


Playtime was over.

  


Right on schedule, the blue and white Stark race-car veered around the corner ahead and came screaming towards him, and towards the absolute devastation that was the piles of burning wreckage blocking the entire track behind him.

  


Unfortunately for Stark, however, Vanko would see to it that he had far more to worry about than simply crashing into the burning wrecks.

  


Once more, Vanko spun one of his whips overhead, only to bring it down with a sizzling snap across the front end of his target’s car.

  


Sparks flew from the cut as the whip effortlessly sliced through the heavy metal of the car’s frame and engine, leaving two perfectly smooth sides that glowed cherry red with heat even as the sheared-off front section of the car flipped and bounced down the track.

  


Of course, of greater concern to Stark was probably how the section he was in was sent flying wildly through the air as a result.

  


A satisfied grin spread across Vanko’s face as he watched in eager excitement for Stark to collide with the furiously burning wreckage of cars, with a certain and painful death to follow. However, at that moment, everything went horribly wrong.

  


Just as the remnants of Stark’s airborne car were mere feet from the wreckage, the car was enveloped in a brilliant emerald aura. Vanko watched in impotent fury and confusion as the car and driver were lifted past the burning wreckage and removed from sight due the thick clouds of noxious black smoke pouring off it.

  


Just as Vanko started to fire the thrusters in his suit to pursue his target, however, he caught sight of a small, glowing green orb bouncing along the pavement to roll to a stop in front of him.

  


With a low, bone-shaking thrum, the orb detonated in a burst of brilliant green energy that sent him flying backwards with a pained shout, the sensors in his suit fritzing and sparking as they were flooded with energy from the blast. Vanko himself groaned in pain as his suit carved a long, broken furrow in the asphalt as he landed heavily.

  


Shaking his head clear, he immediately climbed back to his feet. However, as his digital readouts cleared up, he spotted something that gave him pause.

  


Perched on the pile of burning wreckage was a teenage boy with messy black hear wearing expensive clothes and green-tinted sunglasses. More remarkably than that, however, was the fact that he seemed utterly uncaring about the enormous flames from the wreckage licking his exposed skin or dancing across his strangely non-burning clothes.

  


As the boy idly lifted a hand to wave smoke out of his eyes, however, Vanko also noticed that his hands and forearms were clad in a pair of strange silver gauntlets and bracers of what looked like an advanced design.

  


“You know, I’ve heard of crashing a party, but this is just ridiculous,” the teen quipped from atop the pile of wrecked cars, his crooked grin looking oddly familiar to the armored man.

  


With a quiet mechanical whir, Vanko retracted his mask and helmet so he could speak with the strange boy face to face.

  


“Leave,” he told the boy, annoyance joining his heavy Russian accent in tinting his voice. “My fight is with Stark. You go. Play with toys or something.”

  


“Your fight is with Stark, huh?” the boy asked, to which Vanko nodded. “Then it’s with me, too,” the boy said.

  


“Why?” Vanko asked simply, curious why anyone would step in to fight Stark’s battles for him.

  


“I’m a Stark as well,” the boy stated, the familiarity of his smirk suddenly making sense to Vanko.

  


It was just like Tony Stark’s.

  


“Ah. You’re him, then. The son.” Vanko nodded slowly in realization, having heard on the news about Stark adopting a boy some years ago.

  


Grinning, Vanko allowed his helmet and mask to envelop him once again.

  


“You’ll do,” he declared as he extended his whips with two loud cracks of electricity.

  


It wasn’t simply Tony he sought vengeance on, after all. It was the Stark family itself. If this boy carried the name, then he would suit this purpose just fine.

  


Snapping his whip back, he brought it down in a screaming, sparking arc aimed directly at the boy’s unarmored form.

  


The crowd shrieked in horror as the whip cut through the boy’s body just as easily as it did everything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [maniacal laughter]


	6. Isn’t it always nice when someone lends a hand?

**Minutes earlier**

  


“This is definitely not going to end well,” Jo predicted as they hurtled through the air towards where the strange suit had appeared on the TV.

  


“Thank you, Jo. Your confidence in me is truly inspiring. I don’t know what I would do without you,” Harry replied in the most deadpan tone he could manage. The wind whipped through his hair as he plunged towards a rooftop, only to land with a light, nearly inaudible thud. The moment his feet touched the roof, he was already hurtling himself back into the sky with another leap, absolutely soaring through the air thanks to the anti-gravity harness he was wearing disguised as a belt, combined with the brief repulsor thrusts released from the small nodes built into the soles of his shoes. Together, they allowed him to cover ground at an impressive clip.

  


“Well, you don’t exactly have a lot of gear with you for taking down an Iron-Man-type suit,” Jo pointed out. “Especially one as large and heavily armored as the one we saw on the monitor.”

  


“Yeah, but I do have a can-do attitude, and isn’t that more important?” Harry confidently retorted, stubbornly ignoring the anxious knots in his stomach as he raced towards a probable fight while pitifully unarmed. He didn’t even have his internally expanded bag of tech with him, just a few odds and ends and his reactor bracers, now fully unfurled into gauntlet mode, for what little good it would do.

  


‘ _Come out to Monaco,’ he said! ‘It’ll be fun,’ he said! ‘You don’t need all your stuff. What, are you paranoid?’_ , the irritated teen less than accurately recalled.

  


Harry gave a disgusted snort as he launched himself off another rooftop. _If Tony gets himself killed because he didn’t let me bring all my gear, I’m blaming him._

  


“Harry. Target’s in sight and on the move,” Jo interrupted his internal Tony-blaming as the digital readout in his sunglasses suddenly highlighted a heavy metal suit landing with a thundering crash in the middle of the racetrack.

  


“Okay, seriously! What is with these guys and their need to overcompensate with all these giant suits?” Harry remarked, alighting on another rooftop as he flashed back to Stane and his giant posthumously named “Iron Monger” suit, or as Tony preferred to call it, the “Iron Knockoff.”

  


“Maybe they just can’t find anyone to love them for their personality?” Jo suggested as he started making smaller, more controlled jumps to try and get behind their new arrival without being spotted.

  


Thankfully, it wasn’t likely that Harry’s quiet, floating jumps from rooftop to rooftop would be heard by the hulking metal copyright-infringer standing in the racetrack, given how cars were careening into ear-splitting fiery wrecks as they ran over the jutting spikes of asphalt sticking out of the ground due to his inelegant landing.

  


As for seeing Harry … well, the armored stranger seemed a bit distracted with unveiling his suit’s primary weapons and unleashing them on the poor cars still racing towards him in acts of violence that he somehow doubted the drivers truly deserved.

  


“Are those whips?” Harry asked in surprise as he studied the heavy cords absolutely racing with what looked like repulsor energy channeled through ionized plasma.

  


“They are indeed,” Jo commented as Harry circled around the pileup of wrecked cars and watched one of those whips effortlessly slice through an oncoming Formula One car. Hastily raising his arm, Harry cast a low-powered repulsor stream on the flying half-car, making it glow faintly green as he slowed it down enough that it wouldn’t kill the driver when it slammed into the rest of the pileup, and steering it away from the emergency workers leading the other drivers out of the wrecks as he did.

  


A clamor passed through the gathered onlookers as they spotted him, likely wondering who this teenager was and what he was doing. At least, it did among those who weren’t busy screaming in terror or fleeing for their lives. Thankfully, their little gatecrasher seemed too busy attacking another random racecar to notice, giving Harry the chance to analyze his opponent before making his move, albeit while using his gauntlets to save the driver of this car as well.

  


“Please tell me you can find some weaknesses on this guy,” Harry begged Jo as she scanned the armor with his sunglasses. However, given how his digital readout kept targeting and then canceling the targeting on various parts of the guy’s tank-like armor, the outlook was starting to look somewhat bleak.

  


“Well … with the whips, I’m guessing he’s really hardcore into BDSM, so … maybe try coming up with a safeword?” Jo suggested as the system kept searching for and failing to find structural weaknesses in the man’s exceedingly heavily armored suit.

  


“I’ll try, but something tells me he’s not gonna to honor it,” Harry remarked, somewhat despairing at the thought of fighting the walking tank without the rest of his stuff. Despairing or not, however, that was just what he was going to do, and damned if he wasn’t going to do everything he could to win and walk away.

  


With that in mind, he got an idea. Grinning, he began to build a loosely bound glowing nexus of energy in the palm of one of his gloves, a persistent hum growing louder and louder as it grew brighter.

  


Just then, however, he spotted a blue-and-white blur headed straight towards the whip-happy Master Punisher.

  


“ _Tony_ ,” Harry whispered, his eyes widening.

  


The Iron Interloper didn’t hesitate. With terrible precision, he brought one sparking blue whip down across the front end of Tony’s car with a teeth-clenching grind of shearing metal. The severed front-end of Tony’s car went bouncing down the track, but the half Tony was in was sent flying, flipping end over end as it hurtled towards the mass of burning wreckage.

  


“Jo, distract him!” Harry barked, grabbing a small metal device from his belt and forcing it into the glowing nexus of energy before hurling the shifting mass of light towards the pile-up. With that, he fully amped up the power of his gauntlets and carefully targeted Tony’s car.

  


The time for careful planning was over.

  


And so, disposing of subtlety, he fired both gauntlets at the airborne car, enveloping it in a bright emerald glow and halting it smoothly in its tracks. Retracting the emerald streams connecting the car to his gauntlets, he quickly floated the car through the dense smoke of the wreckage and towards himself, setting it hurriedly down on the pavement.

  


“DzhidIwin?” Tony drunkenly drawled from the driver’s seat, dazed and disoriented from the collision.

  


“Yeah, you won, Tony,” Harry hastily assured the man, building up another glowing nexus of energy in his palm. As the view of the world through his glasses shifted to an array of green lines and harsh contrasts, his opponent’s hulking suit of armor lit up in a brilliant golden orange glow originating from the reactor in the armor’s chest.

  


Thanks to his energy-sensitive glasses, Harry faced no issue in targeting the man’s suit through the dense clouds of roiling black smoke or the mangled mass of twisted steel between them. Hefting the now almost crystalline sphere of energy in his hand, he lobbed it at the man like a grenade. He didn’t bother listening as the crystalline sphere bounced against the pavement on the other side of the pileup with a series of delicate clinks, and he didn’t watch as it rolled to his opponent’s feet just as the man started firing the thrusters of his armor. And he also didn’t bother watching as the crystallized energy detonated with a dull, deep vibrato “whoomf!” that sent the tank-like suit flying.

  


Instead, Harry was making use of the time he was buying to hastily but carefully drag Tony out of the mangled wreck.

  


“Was that guy wearing one of my suits?” Tony asked slightly more coherently.

  


“Yes, he was,” Harry told him as he fully pulled him free, only to set him down and lean him back against the remains of the car.

  


“Friggin’ copycats. I start a trend, and suddenly everyone has to try and hop on board? Can’t everyone understand that mechanical suits are my thing?” Tony complained, pulling off his helmet and shaking his head to clear it.

  


“… I’ll see that he gets the memo,” Harry assured him as he prepared to launch himself towards the apparent fashion criminal as he watched the guy already start to climb back to his feet on the other side of all the wreckage.

  


“No need; I’ll do it myself,” Tony told him, using the mangled car to pull himself to his wobbly feet. “Just give me the football. I’ll take care of this guy.”

  


Harry froze at Tony’s mention of the stripped-down, collapsible Iron Man suit … which would be particularly useful right about now. Except …

  


“I, uh … don’t have it,” Harry admitted.

  


Tony blinked at him. “Well, where is it?”

  


“… with Happy,” he reluctantly confessed, furiously kicking himself for not having thought to grab it.

  


Tony simply stared at him.

  


“Hey, I’m new at this, alright?” Harry said defensively as he activated his harness and leaped into the cloud of smoke.

  


Tony’s slow, sarcastic clap was just completely unnecessary.

  


* * *

  


**A few moments later**

  


“I’m a Stark as well.”

  


The teen’s proud voice echoed out across the racetrack from his smirking, well-dressed form perched atop the pile of burning cars, gauntleted arms folded confidently.

  


“Ah. You’re him, then. The son.” The man in the heavy metal suit nodded slowly in apparent realization before smiling a feral grin that glittered with metal-capped teeth.

  


His final words echoed from mechanical speakers as his heavy metal mask slid down over his face once more.

  


“ _You’ll do_ ,” he declared, his statement framed with a thunderous crackle of electricity as he unfurled his heavy blue whips once again.

  


There wasn’t even time to dodge. With a speed formerly reserved for heroes named Iron Man, his mechanical opponent brought one of his electrified whips screaming through the air to carve through Harry’s unarmored form.

  


However, as that heavy, sparking whip effortlessly sliced through the teen from shoulder to hip, there was no blood, or screams of pain. Harry’s cocky smirk didn’t even waver. In fact, looking more closely, it seemed completely frozen.

  


Almost like a paused video.

  


Between one heartbeat and the next, that image of the confident teen faded as if it had never been, revealing that the whip was currently passing through a dense mass of wildly roiling green energy wrapped around a tiny metal device—a now deactivated holographic projector formerly controlled by Harry’s VI, Jo. However, the armored man’s focus wasn’t on the small silver device. It was on the mass of brilliant green energy now racing its way up his electrified whip, conducted along the very same ionized plasma that transmitted the energy from his own arc reactor, but in the wrong direction and in far, far greater quantities than the weapon was intended to handle.

  


The man screamed as the emerald energy raced all the way up to the whip’s pulley device at his shoulder, overloading and frying everything along its way, including his seizing, rapidly blackening arm inside the armor.

  


With two crackling explosions, the devices in his armor’s shoulder and forearm detonated, their delicate, volatile mechanics overloaded by the green energy as the howling man was driven back to the asphalt once again.

  


His vision darkened as he looked up at the brilliant blue sky. However, this wasn’t because he was falling unconscious. It was because of the burning racecar floating overhead wrapped in more of the same green energy that had caught Stark’s car earlier.

  


However, that green glow quickly disappeared, leaving only an airborne mass of mangled, burning metal suddenly held in gravity’s natural grip once more.

  


The racetrack was rocked with a thunderous crash as the armored man was buried underneath the burning wreck.

  


“Well, that worked even better than I expected,” Harry commented as he stepped out from behind another of the demolished racecars, his silver gauntlets losing their brilliant emerald glow.

  


However, he was soon silenced by the sound of screeching metal as the armored man slowly climbed back to his feet, almost effortlessly tossing the mangled wreck aside with his left arm as he turned and spotted the now slightly nervous teen.

  


“Uh … psych?” Harry said lamely.

  


The injured man’s murderous glare could be felt even through the emotionless metal mask he wore. Turning his head, he looked down at his suit’s blackened, lightly sparking right arm, and the now completely lifeless whip that dangled from it. Raising one heavy metal boot, the man stepped on the powerless whip, pinning it to the pavement as he violently tore his arm free of the now useless length of heavy cord. The mangled arm clumsily lowered again with the tortured squeal of grinding, misshapen metal, but the furiously clenched fist the man made seemed no less deadly because of it as the man raised his gaze to the teenager once again.

  


“Think it’s too late to try for that safeword?” Harry quietly asked Jo as the man reignited his remaining whip with a nerve-wracking crackle of electricity, louder than ever now that the suit’s reactor wasn’t diverting power to two at once.

  


“Strangely enough, I don’t see this being solved with words at this point,” Jo answered as the man started swinging the whip in a deadly figure-eight in front of him, sending sparks flying from the asphalt as the brilliantly glowing whip effortlessly carved through it while the man steadily advanced on the decidedly small-looking teenager.

  


“I think you might be right,” Harry agreed, thrusting his gauntlets forward as he fired two heavy emerald streams of energy at the armored man. Unfortunately, the man’s reactor-powered whip effortlessly sliced through and disrupted the similarly powered streams of energy before they could reach him.

  


The man continued his approach without even breaking his gait.

  


“Okay, plan B then,” Harry decided, backed into a corner with the fence behind him and the wreckage beside. Turning, he fired his gauntlet at said burning wreckage, sending fire racing up the emerald stream as he used his gauntlet to crudely manipulate the foreign energy. Turning back to the disturbingly close armored man, he turned and fired his gauntlets at him again, only this time, one of those emerald streams of energy was enveloped in red and gold flames as Harry essentially fired an improvised flamethrower at the man. As before, the towering man in the mechanical suit reflexively swiped his sparking whip through the streams of energy before they reached him. Unfortunately for him, while this disrupted the emerald reactor energy from Harry’s gauntlets, this only freed the fire tightly coiled around one of the streams. Unbound, the fire spewed wildly into his face in a searing wave.

  


The man shouted as he staggered back, waving his arms in his face in an instinctive attempt to shield it from the fire. However, with his mask and helmet, he was in no real danger of being burned. But that wasn’t Harry’s goal. He had simply wanted to distract the man and blind his suit’s sensors long enough to escape the noose the man had rapidly been shoving him into.

  


To that end, Harry activated his anti-gravity harness and fired one of his gauntlets once again, only this time, it was aimed at a part of the track on the other side of the armored man. Hastily retracting the emerald stream of energy, he flew past the armored man in a blur. As he did, however, he also turned and fired his other gauntlet at one of the many burning wrecks behind him.

  


As the fire enveloping the man’s mask dissipated, the first thing he saw was a mangled, green-glowing Formula One car flying towards him.

  


With another pained shout and the crash of slamming metal, the armored man was forced into another broken furrow in the asphalt, with the trashed racecar settling on top of him like a blanket.

  


Before Harry could capitalize on this, however, the man revealed that his suit had more than just energy whips going for it as he easily hurled the car off of him with an enraged bellow, sending the spinning, mangled mass of steel flying straight towards Harry as he came to a sliding stop on the asphalt.

  


With no time to think, Harry leaped off the ground and reactivated his harness as he fired his gauntlets at the airborne wreck. However, instead of trying to lift it, he extended the streams as if trying to push it away, with the end result being that Harry was instead floated backwards and safely out of harm’s way. As the car slammed to a grinding halt where he used to be standing, the teen came to a gentle landing farther down the track.

  


As he did, however, his cupped hands revealed two glowing emerald spheres much like the ones he had hurled at the man earlier, and with his high-tech sunglasses providing arc trajectory and targeting info, he lobbed them with quick precision at the armored man just as the latter regained his feet, sending the shouting man flying back into the massive pileup of cars behind him as they detonated against his armor.

  


Harry didn’t waste his new opportunity. While his opponent was down, Harry pushed his gauntlets into overdrive, forming and hurling crystalline balls of swirling green energy as fast as he could make them. The man was rapidly buried in an avalanche of explosions and melted slags of debris from the ruined cars around him as sphere after sphere detonated against him.

  


Finally, however, Harry had no choice but to stop, as his stressed and overheated gauntlets had started to absolutely scorch his arms underneath to the point that faint whirls of acrid smoke had begun to curl their way out from beneath the edges. It didn’t matter, though. As the racetrack was rocked with the last pair of explosions, he felt confident that he had already done enough. His nose twitched at the smell of melted rubber and scorched metal as he looked on at the shredded pile of metal rubble laid out over a new, deep crater in the middle of the Circuit de Monaco.

  


“Well,” Tony remarked, coughing from the smoke as he stepped around the giant crater, “that seems pretty final.”

  


Harry shrugged. “I do my best,” he said, blowing on his gauntlets in a futile attempt to cool them off enough to stop scorching his skin underneath.

  


However, before he could do anything else, he was distracted by a deeply disturbing sound.

  


The sound of shifting metal.

  


“Your best officially sucks, kid,” Tony judged as they watched the wreckage in the crater start moving fitfully.

  


“Is this guy freaking serious right now?!” Harry demanded in horrified outrage at the man still being alive after the absolute barrage he had unleashed on him.

  


As it turned out, this guy was, in fact, freaking serious right now. With a rumble of shaken earth, the rubble in the crater absolutely exploded as the armored man burst free, his suit’s rocket-like thrusters roaring furiously as they forced him airborne. His suit was clearly worse for wear, nearly every visible surface misshapen and torn from the explosions, but all of it seemed to amount to little more than surface damage to the thickly-armored, tank-like suit.

  


Almost immediately, the man’s eyes fell on the teen, and with an enraged shout, he brought his still fully functional sparking whip down in a deadly blue arc.

  


Just an instant before Harry went the way of his hologram, he managed to get his gauntlets up, forcing power to their defensive functions and causing a semi-transparent sphere of coruscating emerald light to spring up around him.

  


Unfortunately for him, the similarly reactor-powered and hyper-charged whip barely slowed as it struck and shattered the forcefield like glass.

  


As if in slow motion, the wide-eyed Harry watched that whip reach for him, saw the arcs of blue lightning reach out and strike everything the whip passed by as it moved closer and closer to him. Desperately, Harry strained to twist his body and bring his gauntleted arms between him and the whip.

  


“ _Harry!_ ” Tony shouted in horror as the plasma-infused whip struck the screaming teen and sent him flying, only to roll to a stop down the road, painfully silent and deadly still.

  


Not pausing to think, Tony ran at the armored man. He had absolutely no plan of action for how he could hope to accomplish anything without a suit of his own, but he didn’t care. Over and over, his mind played and replayed the image of Harry’s broken body being sent flying, and all the while, it was cruelly overlaid with flashbacks of the day he had met the kid, when Stane had nearly killed the boy the same way while he could do nothing but lie there and watch, helpless.

  


Things were different now, though. Today, Tony wasn’t trapped in a mangled suit. And so, with a furious, mindless yell, he threw himself at the armored man, desperate to do something— _anything—_ to stop things from playing out that way a second time.

  


Unfortunately, he was harshly snapped back to reality as the armored man’s battered but still functional right arm snapped out to catch Tony by the throat, forcing yet more flashbacks of that same fight.

  


As Tony gasped for breath, the man’s mask and helmet retracted with jerky, battered motions, unveiling a lightly bloody and sweat-soaked face. However, the man wore a savage, satisfied grin nonetheless.

  


“Stark,” he muttered, tightening his grip on the other man’s throat. “Good to meet you.”

  


“Yeah, thrilled,” Tony gasped. “Listen, I don’t have a pen on me, but if you really want, I can probably get you an autograph later.”

  


Apparently, snarkiness was a deeply ingrained reflex in him at this point.

  


The armored man chuckled. “Always the funny man.” He tightened his grip, forcing another gasp from the struggling billionaire. “But we both know the Stark name isn’t written in ink. It is signed in blood.”

  


Tony’s face was turning red from the limited oxygen he was getting, but as always, his tongue had a mind of its own. “Well … that sounds unsanitary, but I suppose I could give it a try. Anything for a fan, right? But you’re going to have to donate the blood. I ain’t signing anything with my own supply.”

  


The armored Russian chuckled at Stark’s cavalier attitude as he turned and walked towards the crater he had been buried in, the furiously struggling Stark soon to be buried there himself still dangling helplessly from his fist.

  


“My father was given a Stark signature long ago, you know,” he explained to Stark. “His name was Anton Vanko.” His eyes narrowed as he tightened his grip on Stark’s throat. “Your father ruined him.”

  


“That sounds like the dear old dad I knew,” Tony gasped. “Maybe I should buy your father a drink.”

  


Vanko chuckled. “Always with the funny words,” he commented again in his heavy Russian accent as he lifted the man over the crater. “Any last ones, Stark?” he asked, his armored fingers twitching in clear excitement as he prepared to snap Tony’s neck.

  


The nearly purple-faced Stark cast a bleary eye over Vanko’s shoulder before bringing his gaze back to the man.

  


“ _Beep … beep_ ,” Tony whispered weakly.

  


Vanko’s eyebrow raised. “Not your best, Stark,” he judged, before simply shrugging. “Oh, well.”

  


Just as he began to tighten his grip around Stark’s neck one last time, however, the racetrack was suddenly filled with the sound of a loud, blaring horn.

  


Turning, Vanko barely had time to glimpse the front end of a speeding black car before it smashed into his legs. With a shout, Vanko’s heavily armored form was thrown back into the giant crater, Stark tumbling free from his slackened grip as he did.

  


“Tony!” Pepper shouted as she climbed out of the totaled Rolls Royce and ran to him.

  


“The … the kid,” Tony coughed weakly, massaging his throat, where a bruised outline of a giant hand was already starting to form.

  


“He’s alive!” Natalie’s voice drifted back from further down the road, where she was kneeling next to Harry.

  


“Of course I’m alive,” Harry complained irately, if somewhat weakly as well. “You think I’m going to die that easily?”

  


With Pepper’s help, Tony staggered back to his feet and limped over towards Harry, who was sitting on the asphalt propped up by Natalie.

  


“Oh, don’t mind me! I’m totally fine!” Happy peevishly called out as he freed himself from the car’s airbag and clumsily crawled out of the shattered window in the mangled driver’s side door, avoiding the scalding steam pouring out from under the car’s crumbled hood as he did.

  


Tony didn’t pay the sulky chauffeur any mind. His eyes were on Harry.

  


The teen had a charred, blackened gash about two inches wide carving a grisly furrow from the top of his right shoulder down to the center of his chest, running deep enough to reveal the scorched edges of his collarbone at the top and what might have been part of his sternum near the bottom. As gruesome as it looked, though, the worst part was probably how it filled the air with a smell not unlike an overdone steak, causing Pepper to gag next to him even as Tony found himself growing curiously hungry. However, bad as it was, the only reason it seemed that the wound wasn’t even worse was because Harry had apparently managed to block part of the whip with his left gauntlet, which was now sparking fitfully due to the equally wide gash carved down its entire length from his knuckles down to the edge near his elbow, only barely missing the actual reactor.

  


Though, of greater curiosity to Tony was the teen’s other hand, which was now exposed due to him apparently having retracted that gauntlet back to its bracer form. As for why, well, Tony suspected it had something to do with the way Harry was using that hand to furiously work at the exposed wires of his left gauntlet, ignoring the way he was slicing his fingers open on the ragged edges of the long new opening in the process.

  


“What on earth are you doing?” Tony asked, wittiness unavailable.

  


“Working on a plan,” Harry asked, raising his left gauntlet to his face to bite and strip one of the lifted wires with his teeth before lowering it back to his lap so he could keep working at it with his right hand without having to move that arm, which would likely be agonizing if not outright impossible due to the blackened wound he was now sporting, and which he was evidently completely ignoring as he continued to hurriedly fiddle with and bleed all over his left gauntlet.

  


“What plan are you talking about, Harry?” Natalie asked, tearing a scrap of cloth from the bottom of her skirt to press to the gash running across Harry’s shoulder and chest, which had started bleeding due to the cauterized skin being torn by Harry’s jostling. When she did, Harry briefly paused as his face turned sheet white from pain, but after a shaky breath, he forced his eyes open and clumsily resumed whatever he was doing with lightly spasming fingers.

  


“There’s no time to explain fully,” Harry said, his words proven right by the sound of shifting metal coming from the nearby crater. “But nothing I’m doing is leaving enough of a mark on this guy. At this rate, he’s eventually going to kill us. But if I can get this working …” He raised his eyes to Tony. “Think you can keep him busy? Buy me a few minutes?”

  


“You seriously think I’m letting you back in there at all?” Tony asked incredulously as the sound of clanging from the crater grew louder.

  


“If you want to stop me, then take him down before I finish here,” Harry told him, not having time to argue as he turned his full attention back to the damaged gauntlet he was repairing and modifying.

  


“Gladly,” Tony stated, shrugging off Pepper’s arm and standing straight. “Happy? Get me the football.” A smirk spread across his face. “It’s kick-off time.”

  


Without another word, Happy tossed him the heavy metal case. Kicking it with his foot, Tony stepped onto the two small platforms that slid out before bending over and reaching for two half-formed gauntlets that had extended out of the rapidly shifting and unfolding case. Sliding his hands into the gauntlets, Tony straightened up and pulled the larger portion of the case against his chest before snapping his arms out to the side, allowing the chest portion of the mobile armor to lock into place as the skeletal structure for the arm and leg sections wrapped around his limbs. The masterwork of engineering continued from there, with segments and plates sliding precisely into place as the red and silver Iron Man lite suit quickly formed around Tony’s body with a series of mechanical whirs and metallic clicks.

  


As his helmet and mask finished unfolding and sliding into place, Iron Man stood tall, ready to kick some copycat ass, and just in time, as the sounds from the crater said that Vanko had just about freed himself from the veritable sand-trap of shredded metal and crumbling asphalt. Before he did anything else, though, Tony turned to look at Harry.

  


“Watch and learn, kid,” he told him cockily. Stepping towards the crater, he primed his repulsors with a high-pitched whine, timed perfectly to blast Vanko just as he crested the top of the crater, sending the man falling back with a shout.

  


“Don’t tell me what to do,” Harry less than wittily retorted as he continued working on his gauntlet.

  


“ _C’mon, Tony_ ,” Pepper breathed, watching anxiously as Iron Man stepped up to the plate, using his suit’s innate edge in airborne maneuverability to fly around his much heavier and clumsier foe, tagging him with repulsor blasts and narrowly avoiding sparking whip strikes in retaliation.

  


Harry, meanwhile, was still scrambling to rework the systems in his damaged gauntlet as fast as he could. He didn’t even consider that Tony might defeat Vanko. Tony’s mobile armor was definitely better than nothing, but it simply wasn’t on the same scale of even his normal Iron Man armor, let alone the veritable tank that Vanko’s armor was, trashed or not. For one thing, the mobile armor was far less durable than Tony’s standard suit, as a good deal of his usual armor plating had to be sacrificed in order to make the suit collapsible. For another, its physical strength was considerably weaker than his standard suit, for much the same reason, and it had no weapons other than the repulsors, either. To make things worse, those repulsors were also less powerful and took longer to prime and fire than Tony’s usual suit could manage. And going by the way Vanko did little more than stagger when shot by them, it seemed that Tony was facing the same issue Harry had.

  


They just couldn’t do enough damage to the walking tank to take him down.

  


“This plan of yours …,” Natalie said, still holding the blood-soaked cloth to Harry’s chest as he worked on his gauntlet, “what odds would you give it working?”

  


“I don’t think we need that kind of negativity right now,” Harry sidestepped, his bloody fingertips feeling like they were being stabbed with needles as he continued pinching and connecting and disconnecting wires and other components with no tools.

  


“Encouraging,” Natalie muttered as she continued watching Tony harass Vanko.

  


“ _Tony!_ ”

  


At Pepper’s scream, Harry’s head whipped around just in time to watch Tony get knocked out of the air, mangled pieces of armor flying free to land with a clatter on the asphalt as Vanko’s whip finally connected. Firing blast after blast at Vanko, Tony kept him back long enough to clamber back to his feet, but just barely. However, with his armor damaged, Tony wasn’t quite as agile as he was before, proven when Vanko’s electrified whip immediately landed another swipe across his torso, sending more pieces of armor clattering to the ground as Tony staggered back, shaking his head as his readout fritzed from the brief electrical overload.

  


“ _Running out of time_ ,” Harry muttered to himself, redoubling his efforts on his gauntlet, now absolutely gouging his fingers on the torn metal as he feverishly reworked the internal components, redesigning its entire system on the fly.

  


“Is there anything I can do?” Natalie asked him, still far more calm and composed than any notary reasonably should be in a situation like this.

  


With an almost triumphant hum, Harry’s damaged gauntlet finally powered up.

  


“Yes!” Harry shouted in celebration before looking up and meeting her eyes with a fierce grin. “Get Happy and Pepper out of here,” he told her, returning his right bracer to its gauntlet form as he climbed painfully to his feet, with Natalie’s generous assistance.

  


“You sure?” Natalie asked the teen, apparently questioning his suitability for combat, given how he wavered on his feet woozily.

  


Harry’s face turned serious, however, and he gave her a resolute nod.

  


“Alright, I’m on it,” she told him, turning and running briskly towards Pepper and Happy before firmly leading them off, no matter how Pepper struggled and complained.

  


“Tony?” Harry whispered, his earbud transmitting the signal to Tony’s helmet.

  


“Little busy at the moment. Please leave a message,” Tony replied flatly as he barely ducked a whip strike from Vanko that might have taken his head off before retaliating with a pair of repulsor blasts that seemed to have all the effect of a particularly hard shove.

  


“Remember that plan I mentioned? Well, I need you to get his whip out of play for a moment to pull it off,” Harry explained, still largely being ignored or perhaps even forgotten by Vanko.

  


Which was just what he needed to pull this off.

  


“Okay, one: Iron Man doesn’t need a sidekick, Kid Wonder, and especially not one who’s barely out of diapers,” Tony bit back as Harry glared heatedly at the man, though this was completely ignored. “Two: How on earth would you suggest I do that?” Tony demanded, still ducking and weaving around Vanko’s whip and continuing his blatantly ineffectual counterattacks.

  


“Well, I don’t know! But you’re the one who’s always claiming you’re smart, so think of something!” Harry yelled. “And if you really don’t need a sidekick, then how about I just wait until he finishes kicking your ass, and then I’ll just deal with him all by myself? Would that be better, He of the Delicate Ego?”

  


“Oh, you are so going to be grounded when we get out of here,” Tony swore as Vanko successfully kicked him into the totaled Rolls Royce, forcing Tony to desperately roll out of the way before he joined the car in being sliced in half by Vanko’s whip.

  


“I’m going to take that as tacit approval, so get to it,” Harry told him, only to pause and waver as everything went dark for a moment. “Sooner would be better than later. I think I may be passing out here.”

  


The blood puddling on the ground around his feet from his now heavily bleeding chest wound lent credence to that theory, as did the way the ground seemed to tilt under his feet as he grew more and more light-headed.

  


“ _Grab the whip, Cinderelly. Make it snappy, Cinderelly_ ,” Tony irritably chanted as he staggered out of the way of another flurry of strikes from Vanko’s plasma whip. “Nag, nag, nag!” As Vanko spun the whip overhead, Tony groaned. “You better know what you’re doing, kid.”

  


This time, when Vanko’s whip lashed out at Tony, the lightly armored billionaire stood his ground and allowed the high-voltage whip to wrap around his suit. In fact, to Vanko’s visible surprise and confusion, Tony even reached out his arms and wrapped them around it too, holding the whip fast.

  


“Whatever you’re doing, do it fast!” Tony’s static-y voice came through as his armor spasmed, forced to its knees as it melted around the sparking whip.

  


Harry needed no encouragement, though. With Vanko’s attention on Tony, and his whip out of play, Harry was already on the move, feet pounding on the pavement as he charged up his modified left gauntlet, forcing a louder and louder whine from the device as sparks began dancing across its surface.

  


Vanko’s head turned, spotting the running teen at last, along with the painfully bright green glow now coming from his left gauntlet. He tried to pull his whip free to cut him down, but Tony held it tight, even as his armor smoked and disintegrated around it. So, failing that, Vanko reached out with his right arm, obviously preparing to catch the teen just like he had Tony earlier.

  


However, Vanko’s attention was so drawn to Harry’s nearly blinding left gauntlet that he completely missed the comparatively small ball of energy hidden in Harry’s other palm. And so, as Vanko reached for him, eyeing the teen’s brilliant left gauntlet trepidatiously, he was completely blindsided by Harry’s other hand whipping around to hurl the crystalline ball of energy. As it detonated against Vanko’s right arm, the limb was knocked wide, leaving Vanko completely exposed as Harry launched himself into the air, sparking left fist cocked back.

  


The track echoed with a bellow of rage and pain as Harry threw the punch, his entire left arm vibrating from the energy violently rocketing through his crackling left gauntlet. However, his target wasn’t Vanko’s mask, like the man likely expected.

  


It was the glowing light of the reactor in his armor’s chest.

  


Harry’s metal fist struck the reactor hard enough to shatter the glass protecting it, and as he did, all the energy gathered in his gauntlet was unleashed in a ground-shaking wave that instantly blew the three of them apart, sending the teen flying back, ripping Tony free of Vanko’s whip, and launching Vanko himself back into the remaining pile of burning wreckage with a deafening clamor.

  


However, as Harry and Tony groaned in pain and agonizingly returned to their senses, they saw that Vanko wasn’t dead. Thankfully, while Tony didn’t seem particularly thrilled by this revelation, it was no surprise to Harry.

  


Nor was what was currently happening to Vanko.

  


Before their eyes, Vanko’s arc reactor began violently cycling through its normal blue-white light and a brilliant emerald glow coming from the vast quantities of energy Harry had just forced into it. All the while, Vanko screamed in pain as that same energy poured through the systems in his suit, overloading and blowing them all one by one. However, that was all just a side-effect of the change going on in the man’s reactor, as the now unstable energy source began glowing brighter and brighter as it tried and failed to adapt to the foreign energy being forced through it, its formerly quiet hum growing louder and louder.

  


“It’s gonna blow!” Tony shouted in panicked realization as he tried to calculate the blast radius.

  


Going by his expression, he didn’t like what his calculations were telling him.

  


However, Harry was already on it. It was his plan, after all. And so, gritting his teeth, he agonizingly lifted his right arm, pointedly ignoring the mind-numbing pain coming from what was now likely not just an exposed but outright _shattered_ collarbone as he pointed his relatively undamaged right gauntlet at the man’s suit.

  


Focusing, he fired his gauntlet at the man, enveloping him in an emerald glow that was absolutely dwarfed by the harsh glow of what was by now practically a small green sun violently throbbing in Vanko’s chestpiece. Forcing his remaining power into the stream of energy, Harry quickly lifted the heavy suit into the air.

  


Far, _far_ into the air.

  


His gauntlet’s reactor whined and overheated as it was pushed dangerously past its limits, but he didn’t let up, extending the stream and sending the man’s howling form higher and higher into the sky as Vanko’s now screeching reactor came closer and closer to critical levels.

  


The brilliant green explosion was disturbingly silent. However, its invisible shockwave was potent enough to immediately knock everyone flat to the ground as it struck them, even with the source as far away as it was.

  


As for that source, all that they could see were rippling waves of emerald energy racing outwards in a ring across the sky. Of the armored man at its epicenter, they saw nothing.

  


But then, no one really expected to, given the size of the blast.

  


Which made the smoking, mangled mask that fell to the ground between Harry and Tony especially surprising.

  


“Dibs,” Harry instinctually declared as he tried to climb to his feet to grab the trophy.

  


In response, Tony simply stepped over and picked it up himself.

  


“Hey!” Harry complained weakly, still trying and failing to regain his feet.

  


“Finders-keepers,” Tony said smugly, flipping the mask in the air and catching it. “I should hang this on my wall,” he mused.

  


Before Harry could call Tony an ass, as per their custom, they were suddenly reminded that they were not alone on that racetrack as a chorus of applause and celebratory shouts suddenly wracked the area.

  


“Those idiots are still here?!” Harry asked in astonishment upon finally noticing the countless spectators still lined up just outside the track fences.

  


“Of course they are. You think they could get a show this good at home?” Tony asked, extending a hand to help Harry up, which Harry begrudgingly accepted, though being careful to use his left arm to do so.

  


As Harry finally regained his feet, however, his vision suddenly swam and went dark. When things slowly came back into focus, he found that he was being supported by Tony and Natalie, who once again had a cloth pressed tightly and painfully to his bleeding chest wound. As he came back even further from his partial blackout, he realized they were walking, and that there were EMTs with a stretcher in front of him.

  


“… – _ang on, Harr– … –you to a hospita– …_ ”

  


The words reached his ears as if through water, his quickly fading adrenaline making it harder and harder to keep his grasp on the world around him as his injuries caught up with him at last. However, he still thought that a hospital was a bit much.

  


“ _Don’besilly. ’mfine_ ,” he tried to assure them, though he worried that his inexplicably slurred words undermined his claim just a tad. “ _Don’needahospi–_ ”

  


* * *

  


As Harry slowly dragged himself back to consciousness, the first thing he became aware of was the faint sound of a constant, droning whine. The next was a desperate need to pop his ears.

  


The third was, quite simply, pain.

  


“Ow,” he moaned, sluggishly forcing his eyelids open and trying to compel his brain to start working. Which was easier said than done, since his head felt like it was stuffed full of cotton.

  


“Well, well. It seems Sleeping Beauty is finally awake.”

  


Harry didn’t so much turn his head as let it flop to the side to see Tony sitting there grinning at him.

  


“Aw. You’re gonna make me blush,” Harry muttered, blinking slowly to try and force the world fully into focus.

  


“Really? I thought that was my job,” a woman’s voice commented casually.

  


As Harry flopped his head back to see Natalie sitting across from him lightly smirking, he felt just a tad bit of nervous alarm run through his system.

  


It was better than a cup of coffee.

  


“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the blushing teen denied, suddenly much more awake and coherent.

  


The stunning woman’s smirk deepened as she chuckled and turned to look out her window.

  


“ _I think she bought it_ ,” Jo whispered sarcastically in Harry’s ear.

  


“How are you feeling?” Pepper’s voice cut in before Harry could give Jo a retort.

  


Turning his head again, Harry finally noticed Pepper sitting across from Tony.

  


“Like I fought a guy in a giant metal suit and then slipped into a small coma,” Harry answered, numerous aches and stabbing pains making their presence fully known now that his brain wasn’t as clouded with grogginess.

  


He missed the coma already.

  


“Well, you’ve been asleep for about thirteen hours, so that would be about right,” Pepper replied.

  


As Harry’s ears finally, mercifully, popped, he suddenly realized where he was, and what that quiet whining drone was.

  


“We’re flying home?” he asked, looking out the window next to him to see clouds beneath the private jet’s wings.

  


“Have been for quite some time, Sir Naps-a-Lot,” Tony said.

  


Looking down, Harry saw that his right arm was in a sling, and shifting slightly in his seat, he felt several bandages on his torso, as well as more than a few stabs of pain as his body vehemently protested movement of any kind.

  


Natalie began listing off his injuries. “Cracked sternum, fractured collarbone, a ten-inch-long third-degree burn reaching from shoulder to sternum, numerous small to medium lacerations on your right hand. The doctors think you may also have mild burns under your bracer things, but Tony refused to let anyone remove them to check, for some reason. The doctors certainly didn’t like that.”

  


As Harry looked down at the still mangled gauntlet on his left hand and the bracer half buried by bandages on his right, he was certainly glad Tony had made that call, though he wasn’t surprised by it. Even if the others didn’t understand, Tony knew as well as he did what could happen if he lost those shackles. The reactors may have been heavily drained by the fight, and the left bracer was pretty seriously damaged, but he still didn’t want to know what would have happened if they had been removed completely. Without the constant stream of arc reactor energy running through his body, the creature wouldn’t be kept dormant. And if it woke up and got loose after being locked away for so long …

  


“You were lucky, all things considered,” Natalie continued. “Things could have been much worse.”

  


Harry’s eyes lingered on his weakly glowing reactors.

  


_Yes. They could have_ , he silently agreed. _More than you know_.

  


“You completely slept through the visit to the hospital,” Pepper told him. “The doctors didn’t want to let you go, either.” She turned to lightly glare at Tony. “Not that they should have.”

  


“What?” Tony asked unapologetically. “We’ve got the best doctors waiting for us back home. They can look at him there. And besides, did you see the nurse situation in that hospital? Blegh. The kid deserves better than that.”

  


Harry and Pepper were almost perfectly synchronized in their exasperated head shakes.

  


“You should know, Harry. The burn across your chest is … pretty serious. It’ll likely require skin grafts,” Pepper told him gently.

  


“Maybe not,” Natalie casually mentioned. “The docs said you were healing at a remarkable rate. You might not end up needing them after all.”

  


The redhead’s face was as blank and neutral as ever, but once again, Harry saw the faintest shadow of a calculating look in her eyes.

  


_Oh, she is_ definitely _up to something_ , he reaffirmed for the millionth time since meeting the mysterious woman.

  


“Regardless, our doctors will be able to say for sure back home,” Pepper finished. Her eyes were soft and sympathetic as she looked at him, clearly trying to comfort him as he came to grips with his wound, and the permanent mark it would undoubtedly leave him.

  


Meanwhile, the teen was looking at the bandages binding his chest and the top of his right shoulder.

  


“This should make for a _wicked_ scar,” he declared with a crooked grin.

  


“That’s what I said!” Tony enthusiastically agreed, causing Pepper to groan tiredly as the two boys grinned at each other.

  


“ _Men_ ,” Pepper muttered, while Natalie simply chuckled in amusement.

  


“So, what about that guy? Vanko?” Harry asked. “Do we know anything about him? What his deal was? Or where he got your tech from, Tony?”

  


“His deal was he was a shameless knockoff with anger issues and a whipping fetish,” Tony answered flippantly, though Harry noticed Tony was holding the man’s half-melted mask while he said this, and given the way the tendons were standing out from the strength of his grip, his feelings about the matter were likely far less casual than he was claiming.

  


“Meaning we know nothing,” Harry translated.

  


“I’ve got Jarvis looking into the guy and this dad of his he mentioned,” Tony admitted. “He should have everything that can be found on them when we get back. We might find some answers on how he got his hands on my tech then.”

  


Harry made a concerted effort not to look at Natalie.

  


_It couldn’t have been her,_ he reasoned. _This guy didn’t build that suit or that arc reactor in the last week. He’s had the plans for a while. Which means she didn’t give them to him. At least, not unless she did so long before we met her, which would be well before she would have had the kind of access to those plans that she does now, which would presumably be why she got herself hired in the first place if selling the plans to someone like Vanko was her goal_. His gaze dropped back to the mask in Tony’s lap. _But still, some woman ghosts herself onto our systems and gets herself hired as Tony’s assistant for unknown reasons mere days before some guy shows up to kill Tony using his own tech?_

  


“What’s the public reaction to all this?” Harry asked, working himself to a headache to try and figure this whole thing out, but to no avail.

  


“What do you think?” Pepper asked dryly, picking up a remote and turning on one of the TVs in the jet. The image was muted, but it didn’t really matter. Every channel she turned to, the news was clearly talking about the incident with “Whiplash,” as they were apparently calling the guy, and nobody seemed particularly happy with Tony at the moment.

  


“You just _had_ to go and tell the world you were Iron Man,” Harry idly criticized as he saw newscast after newscast clearly demanding that Tony give them answers for how Vanko had gotten a hold of his tech. That is, when they weren’t simply demanding that Tony surrender the Iron Man suit to the military, since it was clear that others had the tech now.

  


“Hey, I didn’t see you keeping your identity all that secret either, _Iron Boy_ ,” Tony retorted, pointing out how more than a few of the broadcasts were focusing on Harry specifically, and how Iron Man had needed a teenager to save him (which he gathered didn’t exactly help Tony’s case in their eyes). However, at the moment, Harry was more interested in the moniker they seemed to be trying to give him.

  


“Absolutely freaking not!” Harry heatedly swore.

  


“I know. It’s awful,” Tony agreed, shuddering dramatically. “Thinking _I_ would ever need a sidekick? It’s insulting.”

  


Harry glared at him. “Okay, first of all, you would be damn lucky to have me as a sidekick. Second, I am _nobody’s_ sidekick! Third, you _absolutely_ needed my help out there! You would be barbecuing in a racecar pileup if I hadn’t saved your ass! And fourth, and most importantly, ‘ _IRON BOY’_?! That’s the most god-awful thing I’ve ever heard! As if I’d ever stoop low enough to be called _Iron Boy_! Ugh! I should sue those news people!”

  


“Hey, _I’m_ the one whose awesome copyrighted name is being dragged through the mud here!” Tony bit back. “It’s bad enough I’ve apparently got people stealing my designs. But now you’re stealing my _name_?! That’s crossing the line, _Iron Boy_! I should sue _you_!”

  


“I’m not stealing your name, Iron Ass! They’re inflicting it on me!” Harry argued heatedly. “And don’t you _dare_ call me that! I’ll kick your goateed ass, old man!”

  


“Like you even could, you unaffiliated name-parasite!”

  


Pepper sighed and turned to Natalie as Harry and Tony’s “discussion” grew more and more heated from there.

  


“Well, I’m guessing they’re going to be at this for a while. Want to leave them to it and go get wine drunk?” Pepper asked.

  


“Very much so,” Natalie agreed, standing up and following Pepper to another part of the jet, completely unnoticed by the still yelling duo. “But you know, Miss Potts, with all due respect, I think you may have a problem.”

  


Pepper eyed the younger woman over the glass of wine she was pouring, which would be probably her hundredth or so in just the time Natalie had known her.

  


“Actually, what I have are _two_ problems and a coping mechanism,” Pepper corrected her as she nodded towards the aggravated teen and the aggravating man-child.

  


Natalie paused thoughtfully. “Very fair point,” she agreed, picking up a glass herself and joining her.

  


* * *

  


Unfortunately for the irate teen in need of medical treatment and the now slightly tipsy redheads in need of peace, their jet was waylaid on its way home by official-sounding voices coming through the pilot’s radio. Something about issues of national security and a need to debrief Tony. And so, despite Tony’s insistence that the pilot simply pretend he couldn’t speak English, their pilot complied and landed the jet in Washington, D.C. rather than Malibu.

  


“That guy is so fired,” Tony promised as he waited for a ramp to be rolled up to the jet and the door to open.

  


“Seems fair,” Harry commented dryly.

  


“Hey, don’t stand so close to me,” Tony complained, shooing him away. “After this whole name business, I don’t want people to think we’re affiliated.”

  


Harry gave him a flat stare. “You adopted me,” he reminded the man. “We _are_ affiliated.”

  


“Not professionally!” Tony insisted. “I mean, you don’t even have a suit, for crying out loud.”

  


“Well, I didn’t exactly need one to save your butt, now did I?” Harry reminded him smugly.

  


Tony simply glared at him silently as the door finally opened.

  


There was a familiar face waiting for them on the other side, though.

  


“Marshal?” Tony asked in surprise upon spotting the same woman that had delivered his summons to the trial with the Armed Services Committee several days ago.

  


“Mr. Stark,” she greeted, holding up another folded piece of paper that likely wasn’t a candygram. “You are once again hereby ordered to appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee, effective immediately,” she told him.

  


“ _Je ne parle pas anglais_ ,” Tony told her, shrugging helplessly.

  


Blinking in confusion, the marshal turned to Harry.

  


“He says he doesn’t speak English,” he translated for her.

  


With a heavy sigh, Pepper reached past them both and took the summons from the poor marshal.

  


“ _Traitre!_ ” Tony declared as he looked at Pepper in horror.

  


Pepper simply rolled her eyes.

  


“The trial will start as soon as you arrive. I suggest you hurry,” the marshal told Tony.

  


“Yeah, the thing is, my car is kinda in the shop … in Monaco,” Tony told her, abandoning the French.

  


“Thanks to me saving your life!” Happy called out in reminder from deeper inside the plane.

  


“That’s okay. A car was brought for you,” the marshal explained.

  


Leaning to the side to look past her, Harry and Tony saw that she was indeed right. A limo was waiting just outside the ramp with a pair of men in suits standing by the door.

  


Apparently, the committee wasn’t messing around this time.

  


“Ha ha,” Harry mocked Tony. “You be sure and have fun now.” He clapped Tony on the back before turning back to the front of the plane. “Pilot! Full speed ahead! We’re going on without him!”

  


“Not so fast. You get one too,” the marshal interrupted, pulling out a second paper and holding it out to Harry. “You are also hereby summoned to stand as witness for the Senate Armed Services Committee.”

  


“Ha ha,” Tony likewise mocked the horrified-looking teen.

  


“But … but I’m so weak, and injured,” Harry complained piteously, leaning dramatically against a wall as if his knees just couldn’t hold him up any longer. “I need medical attention.”

  


“I’m told the committee has the finest doctors waiting for you after you’ve testified,” she told him, her flat expression devoid of sympathy.

  


Pepper reached out and took that summons as well, ignoring the teary look in Harry’s eyes as she did.

  


“We’re all going,” she told the hurt-looking teen. “We don’t really have a choice.”

  


Hanging his head sadly, Tony led the way out of the jet, followed closely by a similarly depressed Harry, with Pepper, Natalie, and Happy picking up the rear.

  


“We could’ve just kept flying,” Tony groused as they climbed into the limo as if they were heading towards their own execution.

  


“Maybe it won’t be so bad,” Harry tried to assure him, and himself. “Maybe they just want to give us medals for stopping Vanko or something.”

  


* * *

  


Sadly, the trial featured a noticeable lack of medal-awarding.

  


Mostly, it was just Tony getting absolutely railroaded with demands for answers and the immediate surrender of his suit.

  


“Would you care to explain to us, Mr. Stark, how a fully functional and weaponized Iron Man suit appeared yesterday in the hands of a terrorist despite you having claimed just last week in front of this very committee that it would be at least five to ten years before any other country was able to replicate your technology?”

  


“How can you claim the ability to single-handedly defend this country as Iron Man when your own teenage son had to step in to defend you?”

  


“What assurances could you possibly offer that the individual in Monaco is the only one to have possession of this technology? What proof is there that these the designs are not also in the hands of a foreign power who, even now, could be putting the finishing touches on an army of Iron Man weapons that threaten America or her interests?”

  


On and on and on it went. Harry winced and cringed with every blow as the committee attacked Tony without reservation, demanding answers he couldn’t give and a suit he refused to provide. Thankfully, Harry himself hadn’t been called to testify as of yet, but unfortunately, this wasn’t exactly a good sign. It just meant that the committee had Tony so firmly over a barrel that they didn’t even need his testimony after all. And given the increasingly angry mutters circling through the people sitting in the audience for the trial, the public was no longer on Tony’s side. They were scared, and angry, and they didn’t trust Tony to protect them anymore.

  


As for Tony, gone was the cockiness and casual charm he displayed in his previous trial. Instead, the man simply grew more and more quiet as the veritable assault continued, his eyes growing darker and his shoulders drawing in as he found himself unable to answer the committee’s charges … leaving him to wonder if maybe they were right.

  


He had been so determined to keep the Iron Man suit to himself rather than turn it over to the government because he didn’t trust anyone else with the technology. But now, he wasn’t the only one who had it. The committee was right; there was no telling how far it had spread beyond Vanko. The man wasn’t alive to explain where he had gotten it from, and he couldn’t tell them whether he had shared the designs with anyone else, either.

  


As he sat there, taking blow after blow from the incensed senators, Tony found his hand drifting to the reactor in his chest, his eyes falling to the watch-like device wrapped around his wrist.

  


Placing his palms on the desk, Tony slowly stood up, the entire room falling dead silent as he did, with the exception of the constant click of cameras recording his every movement and expression.

  


“You have something to say, Mr. Stark?” Senator Stern asked, smugness etched into every line of his face.

  


“I do,” Tony said.

  


“… Well?” the senator demanded impatiently when Tony hesitated.

  


Finally, Tony lifted his gaze from watch-like device and met the man’s gaze. “You’re right,” he admitted.

  


A clamor ran through the crowd at the admission, with cameras clicking faster and faster to catch the moment.

  


“I wanted to be your protector,” Tony continued, turning and looking out at the audience, his gaze lingering on Pepper in particular, where she sat next to Natalie and Happy looking anxious. “I failed.”

  


Another rash of mutters ran through the crowd, but it quickly silenced as Tony continued. “I thought, by keeping the Iron Man technology to myself, I was keeping the world safe from people who would misuse it.” He grimaced. “But that ship has apparently already sailed.”

  


“ _No, Tony, what are you doing?_ ” Harry whispered, terrified at where the man was going with this.

  


“And now, Mr. Stark?” Senator Stern asked, leaning forward in anticipation, his smirking eyes both hopeful and triumphant.

  


Once again, silence reigned throughout the room as Tony hesitated, but finally, he opened his mouth to speak.

  


At that moment, however, the entire room was rocked with a massive boom that shook the ground and sent plaster dust falling loose from the ceiling like tiny waterfalls as several people screamed in fright.

  


Harry felt his stomach turn to ice as he joined everyone in staring at the doors leading to the courtroom, where the sound of terrified screams and desperate gunfire could be heard.

  


Briefly.

  


As the hall outside suddenly fell into a blood-drenched silence, the doors burst open, falling to pieces from the force they were struck with.

  


And on the other side …

  


Harry’s nearly frozen mind was flooded with a horrified, desperate denial at what he was seeing, but no matter how hard he blinked, they didn’t go away.

  


A small army of Iron Man suits were marching through those doors, and they were real.

  


The mechanical suits lacked the hulking physique of Vanko’s tank-like armor, or the sleekly agile design of Tony’s. Instead, they settled somewhere in between as they marched down the center aisle, their lack of neat, military precision in no way making them seem any less intimidating as their near feature-less helmets turned left and right to scan the crowd like wolves eyeing cornered sheep.

  


As Harry began forcing himself to acknowledge and process more than just the mere fact of their presence, he started catching the finer details. The suits were painted almost solid in a deep, bloody scarlet, broken up only barely by swathes of pure, jet black. They were also more visibly armed than Tony’s suit, with what looked like small, shoulder-mounted missile launchers and gun barrels attached to the tops of their forearms.

  


There was no mistaking them for superhero hopefuls. They were an army.

  


As the final detail Harry noticed, their chestplates featured a blue, glowing arc reactor just like Tony’s, but encircling it was a strange black sigil Harry didn’t recognize.

  


It was ten linked rings, each housing a symbol he couldn’t place, and centered in the circle they made was a pair of crossed swords set just below their arc reactors.

  


As Harry glanced at Tony, however, he saw the man staring at that symbol like it was a viper, clearly recognizing it and unhappy about seeing it.

  


The audience that had gathered to watch the trial, including the camera-wielding press, had by now been silently pushed at arm-mounted gunpoint into two terrified, whimpering bunches, herded against the side walls to clear a path to the door the mechanical army had just blasted their way through. Harry just barely caught sight of Pepper, Happy, and Natalie in one of the presses of people. As for himself and Tony, however, they remained standing by the table across from the entrance. The suited strangers hadn’t tried to force them into the huddles of people, but whatever it was they were now clearly waiting for, it was a safe bet it had to do with them.

  


As Harry studied their situation, he grew more and more certain that they were, quite simply, _fucked_. Tony’s collapsible suit had been heavily damaged in the fight with Vanko, and so it had been left on the jet, and Tony didn’t exactly have a spare with him. As for Harry, his gauntlets were nearly out of juice, and one was seriously damaged and only barely functional thanks to some absolutely atrocious field modification, so there was no telling how much longer it would keep working at all.

  


And that was ignoring all the lovely little details like his broken collarbone and the third degree burn across his chest, which didn’t say much for his usefulness in a fight even with working gear.

  


_Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK!_ Harry mentally cursed as he tried to find some way to spin the situation so they wouldn’t be completely screwed.

  


He came up with nothing.

  


However, he was soon distracted from these increasingly frustrated and panicked thoughts as it became clear exactly what the suited army had been waiting for as they kept the nervously milling crowd at gunpoint.

  


“I hope no one minds,” a man’s deep voice sounded, his words accented and overly enunciated, “but I decided to invite myself to this trial.”

  


Harry didn’t quite know what to make of the man delicately picking his way over the rubble of the doors as he stepped into the room. Unlike the others, he wasn’t wearing a mechanical suit. In fact, he was wearing a set of ornate, flowing green and gold robes made of what looked like silk. As for the man himself, he had long, straight black hair neatly swept back to brush against his shoulders, and a prominent hooked nose that, combined with his thin, severe lips, gave the man a distinctly predatory appearance that dwarfed even the ones his heavily armed and armored lackeys gave off. And the fact that they were his lackeys was abundantly clear, as each time he stepped past one, they turned and bowed low to him in a display of servile loyalty that he ignored just as casually as one would sunlight, or air, clearly taking it as nothing less than the proper and expected way of things.

  


His eyes, though … they were what really drew one’s focus, harsh and black and … _alien_. Their vaguely human appearance only served to make them seem more monstrous as he cast a casual glance over the assembled people like a great beast idly deciding on which prey to devour, even as he lightly smiled at them all in what seemed a pale mockery of human emotion thanks to those ravenous eyes.

  


Harry almost didn’t notice the man’s long-nailed hands lightly clasped together in front of him, or the numerous odd-looking rings adorning them.

  


“I’m sorry, I guess they were all out of nametags out there,” Tony snarked at the man. “So perhaps you could simply tell us who the hell you are.”

  


Rather than grow upset at his attitude, the lavishly dressed man simply smiled more deeply. “Of course. My apologies. The formalities must be observed.” Placing a hand over his heart, the man bowed slightly. “I am called the Mandarin.” His smile grew even more predatory as he directed it at Tony. “I was your host for quite some time, Tony Stark, though we never had the opportunity to meet face to face.”

  


“So, you’re the leader of the psychos that kept me trapped in a cave all those months?” Tony asked, causing the reporters in the audience to mutter to themselves as they grew even more fervent in their filming, which their armored guards, strangely enough, did nothing to stop. “You know, I never did get around to writing that Yelp review, but since you’re here, I feel I should tell you that your little resort absolutely sucked. The staff was surly, the turn-down service was a complete joke, and I never once got a mint on my pillow-rock. Zero out of five stars.”

  


The Mandarin, as he called himself, chuckled as he turned to the herded crowd. “Your protector,” he introduced, gesturing towards the snarky billionaire. However, the man’s eyes soon turned to Harry himself. “One of them, anyway,” he added more quietly as he stared at the teen unnervingly.

  


“Yes, thanks for that, but if its all the same to you, I think I’ll leave my introductions to the Ironettes,” Tony told him irritably. “A bunch of dancers just strikes a much better note than some creepy guy in a robe. So why don’t you skip ahead to telling us all what it is you’re doing here.”

  


Even still, the Mandarin didn’t become upset, simply smiling at Tony with all the good if somewhat patronizing humor of someone watching the antics of a small child. “Ah, yes. The cocky, confident Tony Stark, envy of billions, defender of the innocent, the Iron Man.” The Mandarin once again clasped his hands together, making him seem like a wise father speaking to an unruly son.

  


Out of nowhere, Harry felt a sudden stab of pain, which was when he realized he had started subconsciously rubbing his chest, which, given the deep burns there, was ill-advised.

  


He shook off the strangeness of the moment as the Mandarin continued talking.

  


“That is the image you like, yes? This is the one your dancers and your flashy armor help you sell, isn’t it?” the Mandarin asked Tony. “But doesn’t the world deserve the chance to see the true face of its protector?”

  


As the Mandarin gently fiddled with one of his rings, Tony raised his hands to touch his face with a theatrical look of confusion. “Nope, not wearing my suit. So I guess this _is_ my real face. I know, it’s so devilishly handsome that it’s hard to believe, but don’t worry; you’ll get used to it.” Tony flashed the man a charming, cavalier grin.

  


Harry, meanwhile, was feeling anything but cavalier. Once again, a sharp stab of pain had made him realize he had been subconsciously rubbing his chest. This time, however, he realized there was something else, too.

  


He felt … wrong.

  


“Tony?” he called out softly, hunching over slightly as he continued clutching his chest.

  


Tony didn’t seem to hear him, as the Mandarin had stepped towards him, still idly twirling one of his rings.

  


“Come now, Mr. Stark. Surely these people deserve to know the truth, deserve the chance to see the _real_ you, don’t you think?” the Mandarin asked, a mere foot from Tony. “You ask them to trust you as you fly around the world in your shiny suit protecting them, hording your creation to yourself. Shouldn’t they have the chance to see their protector’s true face? To decide if he is where they _really_ want to place their faith?”

  


Tony looked as confused as everyone else. “You know, you really are free to start making sense any time now,” he told the lavishly dressed man.

  


The Mandarin slowly nodded. “I see. I will have to show them all for you.” Turning his head, he nodded at one of his armored thugs, who immediately stomped over and seized Tony’s left wrist.

  


“Tony!” Harry yelled, charging up his gauntlets to fight, no matter how damaged or drained they were. However, with a simple look from the Mandarin, Harry nearly collapsed as the strange, roiling feeling inside him grew stronger.

  


A cold pit of dread settled in his stomach as he finally realized what it was. “ _Oh, God, please no_ ,” he quietly begged, his eyes wide and unseeing.

  


He almost didn’t even notice as the armored thug lifted Tony’s wrist into the air, and then crushed it.

  


Tony’s scream of pain filled the room as he hunched over grabbing his shattered wrist. However, as it trailed off into agonized groans, the sound of shocked, fierce whispering could be heard coming from the entire audience as they glimpsed Tony’s face.

  


“There,” the Mandarin cooed. “That is much more honest, isn’t it?” Holding out a hand, his armored lackey tossed him the shattered remains of what looked like a high-tech watch. “Holographic projections make for poor masks, Mr. Stark,” the Mandarin chided him, clucking his tongue in disappointment.

  


Tony finally realized what was going on. Without the device, everyone could suddenly see his true appearance.

  


And it was ghastly.

  


Diseased, blackened veins absolutely covered the man. They reached out from under his shirt, covering his neck almost solid as they stretched all the way to his face, spider-webbing across his cheeks and chin, and even coming down from his hairline to spread across his forehead. In the disturbingly small stretches that weren’t discolored by poisoned veins, his skin was so white it was almost transparent, and combined with the gaunt, hollow cheeks and bruised, sunken eyes, it gave the previously handsome playboy an horrifically skeletal appearance.

  


“Not the face of a true and hale defender, is it?” the Mandarin rhetorically asked as he studied the man almost ponderingly.

  


Tony didn’t bother responding. His eyes were on Pepper. Her hands were clasped to her mouth in horror, and her eyes screamed confusion.

  


And hurt.

  


“How much longer do you have, Mr. Stark?” the Mandarin asked him next as Tony hung his head in shame. “Weeks? _Days_?” The Mandarin shook his head. “That doesn’t really seem like a protector people can depend on.”

  


Harry stared in shocked horror at Tony’s appearance, and at how near death’s door he seemed to be. However, he didn’t get the chance to say anything, as with a pained groan, he collapsed to his knees, the roiling feeling inside growing stronger.

  


“Harry? What’s going on?!” Tony asked in concern, finally noticing Harry’s condition. The teen’s sweat-soaked face was contorted in strain as he panted desperately, clutching his chest as if trying to hold something back. Tony turned to the Mandarin. “ _What are you doing to him?!_ ” he demanded in a rage.

  


“The same thing I did to you,” the Mandarin replied, still idly twisting one of his rings as he stared down at the boy. “I’m removing his mask, and showing the world the true face of their would-be defender.”

  


As Tony turned back to Harry, he watched in horror as the teen’s form started to blur and distort.

  


Tony ignored the confused and alarmed chatter from the crowds as they took in this strange sight, instead dropping to his knees next to Harry in a terrified panic.

  


“You’ve got to fight this, kid,” he desperately whispered. “You can’t let that thing out. Not here. Not with all these people.”

  


“I … can’t,” he whispered back, lips twisted in strain … and despair.

  


“What are you talking about, kid? C’mon, you can fight this. You’re stronger than that thing,” Tony tried to assure him. However, the teen could uncertainty and fear tinging the man’s false bravado.

  


Still, Harry drew strength from those words regardless.

  


And so of course, the Mandarin signaled one of his lackeys to grab Tony and drag him back, no matter how he struggled and yelled for Harry.

  


The groaning teen barely noticed, however. The world around him was rapidly falling away, leaving him alone.

  


With _it_.

  


It shouldn’t have been possible. Even with his shackles as drained and damaged as they were, they should have been enough to keep it dormant. But they weren’t.

  


It was awake.

  


And it was _pissed_.

  


He could hear it snarling and screeching from that place deep inside, could feel it savagely clawing its way to the surface like it hadn’t in so long. And with every fiber of his being, he fought it. He strained and howled and turned just as savage as it was as he struggled to keep it restrained, to keep it locked away out of horror at what he knew it would do if it got out.

  


But it wasn’t enough.

  


A part of him dimly registered people yelling his name as he screamed, pain and fury reaching the surface and spilling out as the creature thrashed just beneath the surface of his being, hell-bent on freeing itself and ripping into everyone and everything around it.

  


It was too much. The creature was too strong, too enraged, too _pure_ in its simple ravenous craving for freedom and carnage. He was just a kid. What could he do in the face of something like that?

  


This time, the scream that tore its way free from his throat was layered with the screeching howls of the creature. And though he couldn’t see it, he knew that his eyes had turned pure, feral white.

  


“And _here_ he is,” the Mandarin cooed in satisfaction, his voice somehow reaching the teen even buried as he was under the creature’s rage and hunger and hate.

  


“Your mighty defenders, ladies and gentlemen,” the Mandarin introduced grandiosely, sweeping his hand out dramatically towards the poisoned billionaire and the howling, monstrous teen. “A dead man, and a half-mad boy.” The man grinned. “Don’t you feel safe?”

  


As the teen screamed once again, fragments of the creature’s power slipped free. The ground around him shattered and cracked from the mere pressure of the creature’s imminent presence. Writhing streams of energy-laden black dust burst free from his near amorphous body to tear into the walls and ceiling in wild, uncontrolled swathes, offering the faintest preview for what the creature would do when freed in its entirety.

  


The teen’s howls fell silent as everyone else picked up the slack, the crowds of people screaming in horror or pain as pieces of the damaged walls fell on them. He watched, horrified and helpless, as that same rubble fell towards Pepper, only for her to be pushed out of the way at the last second by Natalie.

  


She didn’t escape it completely, though. When he caught sight of her again through the panicked crowd, she was covered in plaster, and blood streamed down a cut in her scalp.

  


Everything went still in that moment. The screaming masses, the smirking Mandarin, Tony’s furious struggles to free himself from one of the armored thugs … even the furiously writhing creature seemed still and distant in that moment as Harry stared at the blood falling free from someone he cared about … and as he accepted that this was only the beginning of what the creature inside him was going to do.

  


The Mandarin quirked an eyebrow in surprise as the teen’s face suddenly went completely calm, and his surprise only grew as the boy activated his left gauntlet, filling the room with a steadily growing hum as it gathered more and more power.

  


“… – _arr– … Harry!_ ”

  


The expressionless teen finally registered Jo’s voice in his ear. However, he didn’t respond. Instead, he dropped his gaze to his hands. One, wrapped in a battered silver gauntlet, was glowing with incandescent green energy as it charged up. The other was wrapped in bandages partially overlapping a silver bracer with another weakly glowing reactor.

  


While his arms, like the rest of his body, were shifting wildly back and forth from human flesh and blood to the roiling, inky black dust of the creature, the devices remained static, untouched by the creature’s power as they continued flooding his body with the reactor energy that used to keep the creature comatose.

  


However, despite the fact that he wasn’t answering her, Jo seemed to know that he could hear her … just as she seemed to know what he was planning. “ _Harry, what are you doing?!_ ” Jo yelled, panic etched into every syllable.

  


More wild torrents of the indomitable creature’s power tore free of his body as it came closer and closer to true freedom, carving still more trenches in the floor or walls. However, Harry’s eyes never left his brightly glowing gauntlet as he lifted it in front of him.

  


“What I have to, Jo,” he finally answered her, clenching his fist with trembling fingers. With a savage yell, he brought his incandescent left fist down hard on the reactor in his right bracer.

  


The room shook with the force of the creature’s screams as its body was wracked with torrents of the energy it so despised. However, despite the unearthly force of its screech, it somehow still paled in comparison to the far more human howls of agony as the teen writhed on the floor, waves of emerald energy careening through his body, slowly, _agonizingly_ , forcing him to solidify.

  


All the while, though, the reactor in his right bracer started glowing more and more violently as it sparked and whined from stress as it overloaded.

  


The snarling creature was forced just under the surface of his being, howling and snarling at him as it already tried to claw its way back out, but he paid it no mind. Instead, Harry was looking at Tony and Pepper, who were both staring at him frozen in horror.

  


“ _I’m sorry_ ,” he whispered, activating his forcefield just as the whining in his reactor reached a crescendo.

  


The explosion that came was just as silent as it was with Vanko, broken only by the whining hum of the forcefield as it struggled to absorb and contain the blast, funneling the energy back into the gauntlet that made it. However, with one last pulse, the field finally shattered as it was overwhelmed, letting loose a final wave that knocked everyone flat to the ground, even the armored soldiers.

  


As the dust cleared, it revealed a crater in the middle of the courtroom.

  


And inside it ….

  


The faint sound of footsteps sounded in the mostly silent chamber as the Mandarin, the only one seemingly untouched by the chaos, picked his way towards the edge of the crater.

  


“Well, well, well,” he intoned quietly, gently kicking a small piece of rubble off the edge to clatter down the sides, “it seems the younger of your defenders found a stroke of martyrdom inside himself.” The man’s lips curled up in a faint smile. “That almost makes up for the monster he’s been hiding from you all.” Turning back to the gathered civilians, and the still-rolling cameras, he shrugged. “But not quite,” he added as he began to leave.

  


Without a word, his armored soldiers turned from the crowd and followed him, leaving a shell-shocked Tony kneeling on the floor staring at the crater.

  


“Oh, and Tony?” the Mandarin called back from the doorway. “Be sure and keep your suit with you,” he cautioned the man. “Because trust me,” he eyed his crimson metal soldiers, “you’re going to need it soon.” With one last nod at the room, the Mandarin left, calling back over his shoulder, “Court is adjourned!”

  


With the departure of the Mandarin and his army, the sound of sobbing could be heard clearly as Pepper cried, fallen to her knees as she stared at the crater.

  


As for Tony, his poisoned face looked even paler than ever as he stared at the crater as well, nerveless in his shock. Eventually, however, he found the strength to rise from his knees and approach the site with trembling, shuffling footsteps.

  


As he finally peered over the side, however, he paused with a gasp of shock.

  


There, hidden from everyone else’s sight by the edges of the crater, and half buried in rubble, lay Harry.

  


With a desperate scramble, Tony threw himself down the side and reached out to check the boy’s pulse with trembling fingers, ignoring how Harry’s body was still crackling with green sparks from how the blast had oversaturated his body with reactor energy in order to forcibly render the creature dormant once again.

  


“He’s alive!” Tony called out, joy and pain and untold other emotions coloring his voice. This news was received with gasps of shock and the clatter of desperate footsteps as Pepper practically launched herself towards the crater, followed closely by Happy and Natalie. Meanwhile, Tony was busy trying to clear the rubble burying the boy, only to suddenly be reminded with a mind-numbing stab of pain that his left wrist was still shattered.

  


As Pepper reached the edge, she froze once again, standing with her hands clapped to her mouth in horrified shock at what she saw.

  


Natalie did not, however.

  


“Pepper! Call an ambulance! He needs a doctor, now!” she barked, immediately taking control of the situation as she helped unbury the unconscious teenager. “Happy! With me! We need to get him out of here!”

  


Obediently, the chauffeur slid down the side and joined her in clearing Harry’s body as the injured Tony stepped back. With only one hand, he’d only be getting in their way.

  


A dry, mirthless snort burst free of the overwhelmed man at that particular thought.

  


Pepper, meanwhile, was still standing there. “H-he … h-h-his …”

  


“ _Pepper!_ ” Natalie barked again, snapping the woman out of her daze to meet the other redhead’s eyes. “He needs a doctor. Call an ambulance. _Now_ ,” she ordered in a tone that brooked no argument whatsoever.

  


Pepper nodded jerkily. “R-right. Doctor. Right.” Pulling out her cell phone, she pressed the buttons with twitching fingers and raised the phone to her ear.

  


“ _911\. What’s your emergency?_ ” a voice answered on the other end just as Natalie and Happy carefully lifted Harry between them and started to delicately carry him out of the crater.

  


“Yes, hello? I n-need an ambulance at the courthouse for the Armed Services Committee,” she told the operator shakily, her phone trembling in her grip as she stared in shock at the teen being dragged out of the crater.

  


“ _Alright, I have one on its way. Can you tell me what happened? Who’s hurt?”_ the operator gently but firmly prompted.

  


“It’s my s-son,” she answered. “He … h-h-he’s r-really badly b-burned. And his …” Her voice broke as she struggled to continue.

  


“ _His what, ma’am?_ ” the operator prompted.

  


“… H-h-his right arm is g-gone.”


	7. Riddle me this

******A Malibu hospital**

  


In an upscale, obscenely expensive Malibu hospital, one sterile white room in particular hung with a still, heavy silence, broken only by the faint, steady beep of a heart monitor. On a bed, shrouded in bandages and trailing with tubes and IVs, lay Harry. His skin still occasionally sparked with emerald reactor energy from … _the incident_ , but the teen himself never moved.

  


Nearby, nearly as motionless as the unconscious teenager, Tony sat, haunted eyes fixed unwaveringly on the broken boy. He never even flinched as the door swung open, or as Pepper gently stepped into the room, her heels clicking on the cold tile. He simply continued his silent vigil.

  


Just as he had for quite some time.

  


The redhead slipped silently into the chair next to his, wordlessly passing him a cup of cheap, watery coffee. He accepted with all the shaky, distracted grace of someone who had been up for several hours straight, and planned to be up for several hours more.

  


“I spoke to the doctor again,” Pepper told him, her voice quiet and subdued as she joined him in watching over the unresponsive teen.

  


“… What’d she say?” Tony finally asked, his voice hoarse from disuse.

  


And from pain.

  


“His burns are healing quickly,” she told him. “Very quickly, actually. And so far, there’s been no sign of infection. So … she thinks he’s out of the woods as far as … a-as far as dying goes.”

  


Tony nodded slowly. “Well, she is the best doctor money can buy, so she must be right.” However, despite the optimism of the words themselves, his tone remained just as hoarse and unmollified as ever as his eyes drifted over the heavy bandages binding so much of the boy’s skin. Even worse, he quickly found his gaze returning to the one wound that he’d been staring at above all others.

  


“The … the arm is …,” Pepper tried to continue, only for her voice to crack. Swallowing, she tried again. “The arm is … as well as can be expected.” Her reddened eyes joined Tony’s in staring at the bandaged nub sticking out from Harry’s shoulder … and ending shortly below it.

  


“The … the doctor says that there d-doesn’t seem to be much damage to the shoulder joint itself … so that’s …. good.”

  


Coffee sloshed over the lip of the mangled styrofoam cup in Tony’s hand, splashing over his spasming right fist and the cast covering his broken left forearm before it fell to the floor in a series of drips that sounded oppressively loud in the hushed room. Through it all, Tony’s face remained unchanged as he stared at Harry.

  


Without a word, Pepper reflexively grabbed some napkins and reached over to begin dabbing at the coffee on his cast, her motions as robotic and distracted as Tony himself.

  


“And the coma?” Tony asked quietly.

  


Her hands stilled for a moment before continuing, now more shakily. “The … the doctors still don’t know what’s causing it,” she blinked her eyes furiously as they began watering, “so they don’t know when he might wake up … or …”

  


“Or _if_ he might wake up,” Tony completed for her.

  


“… yeah,” she admitted in a whisper.

  


For several moments, silence enveloped the room as they stared at the boy in the bed, and listened to the faint, steady beeps of the heart monitor … the only signs of life that still came from him.

  


“… you’re wearing another one of those watches again,” Pepper finally said, gently wiping coffee off the watch-like holographic disguise projector on Tony’s right wrist, a replacement for the one that had been crushed.

  


“I am,” he replied, still staring at Harry.

  


“Why?” she asked him.

  


After a moment of silence, Tony shrugged. “Why not?” he asked in reply, his pain-filled voice apathetic and distracted.

  


Pepper simply nodded as she turned back to Harry. However, the air remained drawn with the tension of unasked questions, and eventually, this reached even the numbed Tony Stark, so he started speaking once again.

  


“I didn’t want anyone to know,” he explained almost absently, his eyes still on Harry. “Not you, not Harry, not anyone. There wasn’t anything anybody could do. I know; I had already tried.”

  


Pepper simply sat in silence as he continued.

  


“I guess … the whole world sees Iron Man as this untouchable, unbreakable thing. And when I told everyone he was me, I had to be just as invincible. And … I liked that.” His hand rose to scrub through his hair shakily. “I don’t know … it just seemed so important that I keep that up, even for you. _Especially_ for you. Yours and Harry’s are the only opinions I care about, really … so it seemed even more important to keep up that facade for you.” His reddened, haunted eyes fell on Harry’s immobile form once more. “A lot of things seemed important at the time,” he finished quietly.

  


After a silent moment, Pepper gently reached over and took his hand in hers. Tony’s expression didn’t change, but his shaky hand clutched at hers fiercely, drawing warmth and strength from the woman he loved as she joined his vigil over their crippled son.

  


“How long?” she finally asked, her voice hesitant and afraid.

  


“Weeks, months … maybe just days,” Tony answered, his quiet voice still nearly apathetic. “There’s no real telling when my organs will finally give out and start shutting down from the palladium poisoning.” Her hand shook as her grip tightened possessively on his. “Once it starts, though … it should be quick,” he finished.

  


“And …,” Pepper began, her mouth dry, “there’s nothing? Nothing that … can be done?”

  


Tony shook his head wearily. “I’ve looked. Hell, that’s practically all I’ve been doing ever since I found out about my condition a few years ago. I only really stopped a couple months ago. There was just nothing to find. I can’t survive without the reactor, but the reactor can’t function without a palladium core. I tried everything I could think of to find a way around that, tried to find some other element that might work in its place, but there was nothing. No element exists that can replace the palladium core.” His grip tightened on hers. “Eventually, I decided that I’d rather spend the time I had left with you and Harry instead of wasting it chasing down something that just isn’t there to be found.”

  


After a moment, Pepper opened her mouth to say something. However, before she could, the door swung open and Natalie leaned into the room.

  


“Something’s going on. I think you should come see this,” Natalie told them both urgently.

  


As one, both Tony and Pepper’s gazes swung back to Harry’s immobile form. However, there was an uncharacteristic look of concern and apprehension in the reserved woman’s eyes, so they both reluctantly stood.

  


“Save me some jello, kid. I’ll be back in a minute,” Tony told the teen quietly before following Natalie out of the room. Pepper simply stepped up and gently but firmly squeezed Harry’s left hand before following suit without a word. However, her silence was undercut with a choking, hiccoughing breath as the door swung shut behind her.

  


The comatose teen never moved.

  


For several moments, the room remained still and silent once again, except for the faint, steady beep of the heart monitor.

  


All of a sudden, however, a strange-looking flurry of motion appeared in the darkest corner of the room, and when it ceased, a strangely dressed girl was revealed, who began slowly and hesitantly stepping towards the bed. For several moments, she simply stood there motionlessly as she stared down at Harry. Eventually, though, she gently sat on the mattress, carefully avoiding numerous tubes and wires as she did.

  


“… Hey, Harry,” she whispered, reaching out and holding his left hand with her own. After a moment, she snorted in humorless amusement. “You know, all I want to do right now is ask if you’re okay.” Her reddened eyes gazed over his numerous heavy bandages, lingering on his missing arm. “And I think that might be the stupidest question I could possibly ask,” she finished.

  


Harry’s eyes never opened, and her shoulders soon started shaking as tears began flowing freely down her cheeks.

  


“God, I hate this,” she whispered, rubbing furiously at her cheeks with the hand not desperately clutching Harry’s own. “I hate sitting here, helpless. I hate what happened to you. I hate that I wasn’t there to try and stop it.” Once more, a shaky, humorless laugh burst free of her lips. “And most of all, I hate that all I keep thinking about is how much you know I hate crying, and how you’d be teasing me about it right now if you were awake.” The thumb of the hand holding Harry’s began gently tracing his knuckles as she continued. “And I hate that you’re not doing that this very second,” she admitted, her voice cracking as her crying descended into outright sobbing.

  


“Please wake up, Harry,” she begged, tears dripping onto his bandages. “ _Please_.”

  


Her only answer was the steady beep of the heart monitor, quiet and unchanged.

  


* * *

  


**Elsewhere**

  


“What … what is this?”

  


The being raised a hand before it, watching as its form constantly shifted and changed, translucent and undefined as it fluctuated between swirling dust and something more humanoid, as if it couldn’t remember what it was supposed to be, and couldn’t make up its mind either way.

  


“This feels weird,” the being muttered. “This feels _wrong_.”

  


The hand-like appendage left after-images in its wake as it was moved, like living memories of a human hand, extended in joy or raised in anger, intercut with images of pure raging darkness, oily black and utterly ravenous.

  


“Interesting,” the being commented, continuing to wave the arm and observing the strange echoes that trailed behind it.

  


Eventually, the being tired of this and studied its surroundings. Looking down, its body appeared just as amorphous and undecided as its arm, flickering back and forth between a raging mass of writhing dust and a translucent, green-glowing humanoid form. Even the latter wasn’t always consistent, though, alternating between something shorter, wearing what looked like a lab coat and grease-stained pants, and something taller and slender, wearing a dress shirt and tie.

  


Below the being’s feet, however, was a far more interesting sight. The being seemed to be standing in the night sky itself, nothing to be seen but deep, velvety blackness and glittering blue stars hanging in the vast emptiness of space.

  


Looking up, the being witnessed a raging, roiling sky made of inky-black stormclouds that constantly flashed with brilliant sapphire bolts of lightning, though they only passed between each other rather than striking down at the non-ground, writhing like living cords of blue light threading their way throughout the living storm overhead.

  


Looking off into the distance, the being seemed to be standing in a valley framed by mountain ranges rising from the formless night sky, crafted from mangled masses of broken metal and crumbled stone that burned with pitiless blue fires.

  


“Very interesting,” the being observed, clasping its non-hands behind its shifting back as it began to idly wander across the glittering night sky.

  


As it did, however, the being was treated with visitors in the mad, senseless plane. As if they couldn’t be seen while standing still, the moment the being began walking, translucent, blue-glowing specters were revealed standing all around him.

  


“ _Who are you?_ ” a male phantom with a goatee whispered at the being as it stepped past him.

  


“ _Why are you in this place?_ ” another specter whispered at the being as it continued walking, this one resembling a tall, willowy woman with hair pulled back in a neat and professional ponytail.

  


“ _You shouldn’t be here_ ,” another translucent man told the being, this one a huskier man wearing a plain suit and what looked like an inexpensive haircut.

  


“ _The astral plane isn’t for the faint of heart_ ,” a female specter warned the being, this one shorter than the other woman, and far more curvaceous, with curly hair falling in a perfect tangle around a beautiful face as flawless as any mask.

  


“The astral plane?” the being repeated, continuing its slow, measured pace through the crowd of ghosts. “Sounds fascinating.”

  


However, the being paused slightly as it encountered another ghost. Unlike the others, this one seemed to tug at some distant memory in the being, as if a figure met in some half-forgotten dream.

  


The girl herself seemed unremarkable. Pretty, certainly. Very much so, in fact. But so were the other women. This one, though …

  


The being drew to a halt before the ghost.

  


“ _Do you know who you are?_ ” she asked him, her voice gentle as her worried eyes fixed on the being in concern born of what almost seemed like deep-seated familiarity.

  


At the question, however, the being snorted in bemusement. “Of course I know who I am,” it answered as it stepped past the girl and continued on its way, this time headed towards a crumbling stone archway that rose from the formless night sky beneath their feet.

  


The being shook its head at the girl’s silly question. Sure, its memories were distant and fleeting at the moment, like fog burning away beneath a noonday sun. But how could someone not know who they were?

  


Pausing before the archway, the being turned back to the azure ghosts, its shifting form finally stilling as it settled on the tall, neatly dressed human form.

  


The strange ghosts he didn’t know looked at him in nearly identical concern, exceeded only by the worry in the girl’s eyes as she stared at him.

  


“I’m Tom Riddle,” he told them as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  


Shaking his head at their confusion, he turned and strode through the archway.

  


* * *

  


**The hospital**

  


Tony’s haunted eyes widened as he joined the milling crowd of people gathered around the television set, which was giving off the sound of crackling static as whatever program it had been playing was interrupted with a blood red screen. And front and center on that screen was a symbol that filled Tony with dread and hate in equal measure.

  


Ten interlocking rings surrounding a pair of crossed swords.

  


“ _My God_ ,” Pepper whispered from beside him as she stared at that symbol in horror.

  


Suddenly, the red screen disappeared, followed by a wild flurry of chaotic images. Tony’s sharp eyes caught glimpses of armed soldiers firing on civilians, riots on burning streets, bombs detonating, and even fleeting images taken from the incident at the Armed Services hearing yesterday, featuring a terrified, screaming crowd, and his son, blowing himself up rather than allow the monster he was cursed with to escape.

  


Blood dripped from Tony’s hand as his fist clenched so tightly, his fingernails were driven deep into his palm.

  


The images ended, however, revealing the man now known to the world as the Mandarin, wearing the same silk robes and sitting in an ornate wooden throne as his beastly black eyes seemed to stare straight through the screen and into the souls of every person watching.

  


“America,” the Mandarin’s deep, scintillating voice greeted. Pausing, his small, condescending smile deepened. “ _Tony_.”

  


Tony’s arm was now spasming from how furiously his fist was clenched.

  


“I trust I need no introduction for myself,” the Mandarin said. “After all, you met me just yesterday, didn’t you? You know who I am.”

  


The fearful silence that gripped everyone watching the broadcast proved him right. Everyone had seen all the news channels’ live feed of the events at the hearing yesterday. They knew the Mandarin, now.

  


“I think the more important question at the moment is … who are you?” the Mandarin continued. “Would you like me to tell you?” he asked, his black eyes glittering with some undefinable emotion. Leaning closer, he seemed about to impart some great secret. “ _You’re sheep_ ,” he whispered. He chuckled as he leaned back once again. “So desperate for a hero, for a _champion_ , you flock behind anyone you can find who seems willing to take the job.” His smile twisted until it was outright mocking. “Like the Iron Man. So shiny in his fancy metal suit, surely he could be your perfect little shepherd, right?” Clasping the arms of his throne with claw-like hands, the Mandarin slowly stood.

  


“ _Wrong_ ,” he declared, gently sweeping to the side, the camera following his movements dutifully.

  


All around Tony, panicked whispers broke the terrified silence as the camera revealed the cadre of armored lackeys, their hulking crimson forms seeming more intimidating than ever as they stood in a dark room lit by the harsh red gleam of their eye slits and the contradictingly soothing blue glow of their arc reactors.

  


“Tony Stark,” the Mandarin continued, gently dragging his hand across the suits of armor with a faint clatter from his long nails and numerous metal rings, “is nothing but a rich, sickly child flying around the world with his fancy little toys, desperate to convince you all to worship him.” His ravenous eyes returned to the camera. “Those suits were all that made you believe he was anything more than that.” His smile returned. “And as you can see,” he gestured to his iron army, “he isn’t the only one with suits any longer. I didn’t even have to steal these from him,” he confided to them all. “They were a gift, designed and built by my good friend Ivan Vanko. The man you all met in Monaco mere days ago.”

  


The whispers grew louder as several of the people crowded around the television turned to eye Tony.

  


“That’s right, America,” the Mandarin said. “Your beloved Iron Man isn’t as unique as he would have you believe. Others can build his oh so special suits as well. Your shepherd, Tony Stark, is simply a man—unwell, a liar, and nowhere near as special or invulnerable as he claims.” For once, the Mandarin’s smile seemed devoid of condescension as it instead grew deeply satisfied. “And I’m going to prove it to you.”

  


Turning, he began walking past the suits once more. “In one hour, my disciples will attack the one place capable of spawning heroes of the great Tony Stark’s caliber.” He grinned more deeply. “ _Hollywood_.”

  


Tony drew back in instinctive offense at the remark, but the Mandarin simply continued. “Now, Mr. President, you and your army are welcome to try and stop them. I certainly wouldn’t expect anything less. But I should warn you, it won’t be so easy as tracking them on radar and shooting them down. The cloaking devices designed by the poor deceased Mr. Vanko mean my people won’t be showing up on your instruments, so you’ll just have to deal with them the old fashioned way.” The Mandarin paused and regained his condescending look. “Oh … does Iron Man not have that technology? How embarrassing.” He chuckled before seating himself in his throne and continuing. “But I know what everyone will really be wondering: ‘What will Tony Stark do? Will he step in? Will he get there in time? … Will he even make a difference?’” The Mandarin’s bared teeth were doubtless intended as a grin, but with his eyes, he simply seemed like some feral predator snarling at its prey. “Let’s find out together.” The Mandarin leaned forward. “Oh, and Tony?” he added as his mocking smile returned. “ _Good luck_.”

  


With another violent burst of chaotic images, the crimson screen bearing the symbol of the Mandarin briefly returned, only to disappear as the television returned to some cheesy soap opera.

  


No one paid attention to the dramatic woman crying crocodile tears on the screen, though. As one, they were all staring at Tony silently.

  


* * *

  


**Elsewhere**

  


Ghostly hands clasped behind his back, the being known as Tom Riddle continued his steady, measured pace through another level of the strange astral plane that he had inexplicably found himself in.

  


This time, the ground he walked wasn’t the star-filled emptiness of outer space, but simple asphalt. This was unusual in and of itself, though, given that the very modern road meandered through the crumbled ruins of what looked like a once mighty stone castle. However, it was admittedly difficult to tell, since the air around him was shrouded with a dense black fog that slowly churned and roiled like a living thing.

  


Looking upwards, he studied the shattered remnants of the castle that almost seemed to claw through that fog and reach towards the sky like the bones of some titanic fossil spearing through the dirt. Behind it all, the sky glowed with the rich, dusky orange glow of deep sunset, even though the sun itself couldn’t be seen through the flowing black fog.

  


Idly shrugging off the ethereal beauty of the sight, Tom continued on, his fine leather shoes gently clacking on the pavement, even ephemeral as they were. As the road he followed led him through the shattered remnants of the castle, however, that clacking grew and echoed off the massive columns of harsh gray stone until it almost sounded like the booming thump of a massive heart.

  


As he continued walking, part of the roiling black fog suddenly pulled back to reveal a richly lavish and eccentrically filled room beside the road.

  


In the room, he watched a strangely dressed man that he didn’t know rise from behind a massive, ornate wooden desk and hurry towards a bookcase filled with numerous odd silver instruments that whistled or emitted puffs of smoke or performed a dozen other bizarre functions for some unknown reasons. However, the man’s focus, and Tom’s as well, was on one instrument in particular as it shook and vibrated while emitting a piercing wail like monstrous nails on an enormous chalkboard. After a moment, the spastic instrument simply blew apart, the man in the room ducking to avoid the shards violently careening across the room, bouncing off an enormous golden bird perch, carving trenches in the ornate wooden desk, and embedding themselves in the spines of countless leather-bound books.

  


Before the heavy black fog closed up again and hid the strange room from view, Tom watched as the man’s face writhed with conflicting emotions ranging from shock and confusion and fear … to hope.

  


Eventually, though, the man and his room were hidden once again, and Tom was left to continue walking through the nearly impenetrable black fog. However, that fog soon became tinted with a ruddy orange glow from the sky as he passed through the shadow of the castle and continued on his way.

  


Before long, the fog once again parted beside the road, revealing that the street was now passing through a neatly ordered, monstrously perfect subdivision that seemed to stretch on forever, full of cheerless houses complete with neatly manicured lawns and absolutely no warmth or personality whatsoever.

  


However, one house in particular proved a rather interesting exception, given that it wasn’t really a house at all. Instead, it was little more than a smoking crater surrounded by violently strewn rubble. Amusingly, this only barely made it seem any more like the desiccated carcass of a home than it likely was originally, if it had been as utterly soulless as the others around it were.

  


Inside the crater, though, was something even more interesting.

  


A child lay huddled there on its side, appearing nearly catatonic as its large green eyes stared unblinkingly at nothing. The only signs it still lived were the faint movement of its chest as it breathed, and the sporadic, jittery twitching of its limbs.

  


Just on the edge of the crater, the man from the castle suddenly appeared with a ripple of distorted air as he swept an odd silvery cloak off his shoulders. However, despite how the man stood almost directly in front of the child, the boy’s sightless gaze still neither raised nor blinked.

  


As the robed man ran a stunned eye over the devastation that was likely once a mockery of a home, the being in the street noticed that the traumatized child’s clothes, while oddly over-sized and ill-fitting, were neither torn nor even particularly dirtied despite his presence in what looked like the epicenter of a devastating explosion.

  


This all made sense in a moment, however, when the man gently stepped down the edges of the crater and hesitantly extended a hand towards the small boy.

  


With a sudden screech, the boy’s body exploded into a furiously writhing mass of inky black dust that struck the man and sent him flying into the street to roll to a painful stop in front of the being idly watching this whole strange show play out.

  


The man slowly and agonizingly climbed to his feet, his astonished eyes on the amorphous dark mass filling the crater as it slowly shrank down and once more coalesced into the small boy, who lay there twitching even more fitfully than ever as he continued to stare off into nothing with a deeply traumatized gaze.

  


“Interesting,” Tom mused as he watched this. He had no idea why he was being shown this scene, or who these people were, but clearly the weird little boy possessed some unknown power that was the source of the devastation that had visited his home.

  


“ _An ob_ _s_ _curus_ ,” the strange man breathed, drawing an odd wooden stick from under his robes as he cautiously advanced on the crater once again.

  


“Oh, is that what it is?” Tom idly commented. However, he didn’t get the chance to watch the rest of the scene play out, as the sunset-hued black fog closed up once again just as the man reached the edge of the crater, looking down at the twitching boy. With his last glimpse of the scene, Tom watched the odd man slowly lift his strange stick like a weapon.

  


Shrugging indifferently as the rest of the odd event was hidden from view, Tom simply continued on his way.

  


For a while, nothing more happened as the ghostly being continued smoothly striding down the road clouded by flowing black fog bathed in the ruddy orange glow of the sky. Before long, however, the fog lifted once again along one side of the road. This time, it unveiled that same boy, now fully alert and clearly terrified as he fled down narrow alleys and trash-ridden streets at a breakneck pace, an act likely not made easier by the horrendously oversized clothes he still wore. All the while, the panting, stumbling boy kept glancing over his shoulder at some unknown pursuers.

  


Out of nowhere, a man stepped out of the shadows to grab the boy, only to suddenly find the boy bursting into the furiously writhing dark mass from before, which hurled the man away with bone-shattering force.

  


As the mass coalesced into the terrified little boy once again, the whimpering child continued its pell-mell flight, deliberately not glancing at the motionless man lying at the foot of a brick wall several meters away.

  


All of a sudden, however, the ground by the boy’s feet erupted in a small explosion, sending the boy hurtling to the ground with a cry. The source of this attack was soon revealed, as the boy’s other pursuers stepped out of the shadows and advanced on the downed child with trained precision.

  


“Some kind of military or police force, perhaps?” Tom observed as he watched the event play out.

  


He doubted it truly mattered to the boy, though. Given the way the group was advancing on the bleeding child, it was clear to even the most casual observer that they weren’t interested in arresting the boy, and they certainly weren’t here to help him.

  


They were here to put him down.

  


“This should go well,” Tom commented in expectant amusement.

  


Sure enough, the injured child flipped himself over, revealing that his scared, youthful green eyes had been replaced with a solid, feral white glow that gave even the approaching figures pause.

  


“ _Leave me ALOOOONE!_ ” the boy screamed, transforming into the writhing dark mass mid-shout, which tore into the screaming men with a savage fury.

  


Sadly, the fog closed on the scene of the carnage, and the disappointed being in the street had no choice but to shrug and continue on.

  


However, up ahead, the fog parted once again, revealing that the road he walked led to a large container ship, which gently rested in a smooth, mirror-like ocean of sunset-hued water that stretched unbroken to the very horizon, where it blended so seamlessly with the ruddy orange sky that the two seemed to be one and the same.

  


Lowering his gaze from yet another impossible, unearthly view, he noticed that the boy was now walking the same road he was, slowly limping towards that ship with an injured, exhausted desperation.

  


Drawing level with the boy, the being known as Tom Riddle finally had a chance to study the child closely. The boy’s grossly over-sized clothes were now mere tatters hanging limply off his scrawny limbs, which likely spoke of several other encounters with the armed figures hunting him. More interestingly than that, however, the boy’s form constantly rippled and blurred as he kept nearly transforming into that strange beast the robed man from earlier had called an obscurus, whatever that was. However, the boy never transformed completely. Instead, the exhausted, nearly catatonic child simply continued plodding towards the ship like it was a lifeline, shadowed eyes fixed and unwavering.

  


He followed as the child snuck across the ship gangway, clumsily avoiding various bored and oblivious shipworkers as he crept belowdecks, finally collapsing in the darkest, most out-of-the-way corner he could find, where he lay staring at nothing in a near fugue state as his form continued to blur and ripple, his shadowed eyes flickering between sightless green and feral white.

  


As the floor beneath them gave a slight lurch, Tom realized that the ship they had boarded had launched, beginning its trek to some unknown destination across the vast ocean.

  


The boy never reacted, however. He showed neither curiosity as to the ship’s destination, nor excitement that it had begun. As he continued to huddle there, it was clear that the only thing he cared about was escape.

  


However, even if the boy could outrun the strange people hunting him, it was obvious that he would never be able to escape his true enemy, as his form continued to waver and blur from the unearthly dark force locked inside.

  


Turning, Tom idly scanned the rest of the dank, dark room the boy was cowering in, and to his pleasure, he spotted another crumbling stone arch like the one he passed through before.

  


“I don’t know why I’m seeing all this nonsense, but there had better be a good reason,” Tom groused as he made his way to the portal that doubtless led to some other level of this strange, dream-like astral plane.

  


Without hesitating, he stepped through.

  


* * *

  


**The hospital**

  


“You _cannot_ be serious!” Pepper exclaimed.

  


“Sure I can. Assuming ten minutes here arguing with you, then twelve minutes home, another two minutes to gear up, and I’d still have time to stop and have a leisurely steak dinner before getting there in time for the deadline,” Tony countered blithely.

  


Pepper simply glared at him without responding.

  


“What am I supposed to do, just sit here watching soap operas while the Mandarin’s people are out there attacking innocent people?” Tony asked with some heat.

  


“Yes! I mean, what, does the guy have to wave a giant ‘This is a trap!’ sign for you to realize that’s what this is?” Pepper asked in exasperation.

  


“Of course it’s a trap! But I’m not going to be the one who gets caught in it; the Mandarin is. This is classic Road Runner stuff here,” Tony argued.

  


Pepper blinked at him in confusion.

  


“You know … Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner?” Tony prompted. “Coyote sets up some elaborate plan to catch the Road Runner, who then casually turns the whole thing back on the Coyote with a cheerful ‘Beep beep!’ … Ringing any bells?”

  


Pepper simply continued blinking at him.

  


“… in this instance, the Mandarin would … be the Coyote,” Tony lamely explained. “Did you not have a childhood or something?”

  


“Actually, there’s no real proof that the Mandarin will be attacking Hollywood just because he said he would,” Natalie calmly interrupted the slew of verbal diarrhea. “There’s no real tactical value to it, and he could very easily be attacking some other target entirely while you and everyone else are busy waiting for him there.”

  


Tony frowned at her. “Whose side are you on?”

  


“Tony, you’re not well!” Pepper pointed out. “And who knows what this guy is really planning?! He coul–”

  


“I KNOW!” Tony shouted.

  


Everyone paused at the unexpected outburst.

  


“I know I’m dying. I know I have no idea what this guy is planning. I know I don’t even know what he’s capable of. I _do_ know he’s taking the legacy I wanted to leave the world and instead using it to try and destroy it. I also know that no one has any faith in ‘the Iron Man’ to save them anymore, and I know that none of you are any exception. I know that Harry might be dying in the next room just from having _met_ this guy, and that if he wasn’t, he’d be standing right next to all of you telling me not to do this too. And I know _exactly_ whose fault all this is.” Tony’s glare turned to outright loathing. “ _Mine_.”

  


Pepper gave a hiss of in-drawn breath in shock at the claim, but Tony just kept right on going.

  


“My tech. My creation. My fault,” Tony explained to them. “The reactor, the suits, all of it. My doing. And now Harry is in that room going through God knows what. The doctor may not know what’s causing the coma, but I do. His entire body was completely overloaded with arc reactor energy, just absolutely _flooded_ with it. That amount of energy …,” Tony paused and clenched his eyes before continuing. “It’s a miracle he even survived. But how much of him really did? And I don’t just mean his missing arm. That’s nothing compared to what I’m talking about. What about how that much energy just careened through his entire nervous system? Through his _brain_? Even if—IF!—he eventually wakes up, how much of _Harry_ is still going to be there? Will he remember us? Will he remember _himself_? Will he be able to think, or speak? Will he be able to walk, or will his nervous system have been so completely fried that he’ll be stuck with all the grace of a drunk toddler for the rest of his days, unable to put on his own clothes, or write, or even feed himself? … Or is he just going to be a vegetable?” Tony drew a shaky breath. “My tech. My fault.”

  


Pepper looked utterly horrified at what he said, but Tony never slowed down to let her speak.

  


“That guy?” Tony demanded, pointing back at the room with the TV. “Maybe I can’t stop him. He’s got an entire _army_ of my suits, after all, and I can only wear the one. But maybe—just _maybe_ —I can take him down. Just maybe I can make this one thing right, and stop him before he uses my tech to ruin any more lives.” He lifted his hand to look at the bloody nail-marks left by his furiously clenched fist.

  


His right hand … which was one that his own son no longer had. Because of him.

  


“It’s the least I owe Harry right now,” he added quietly.

  


No one said a word as he turned and left.

  


* * *

  


**Elsewhere**

  


“Oh, look. More weirdness,” the being known as Tom Riddle sighed. “This is growing tiresome.”

  


This time, his steps were marked by soft, wet crunches and the razor sharp smell of brine as he tread across a desolate landscape that gave all the impression of having recently belonged under some enormous ocean.

  


The slick, lifeless gray stone under his feet was coated in a light crust of sea salt as it drunkenly lurched its way towards every horizon, falling into deep crevices or rising into twisted, curling spires along the way. However, hidden amidst the tangled backdrop of jagged cliffs and massive stone arches, he caught glimpses of what looked like ancient buildings of a strange, unknown design. More curiously than that, however, was the fact that they didn’t look like the simple stone huts of some primitive bygone culture. Even ruined and crumbling, the monolithic structures still reeked of the work of an advanced, mighty civilization that had once ruled as the undisputed lords over this entire world, until the planet itself rose up and swept them away like nothing more than so much driftwood.

  


Combined with the dull, gloomy violet light of the slow-moving auroras overhead, and the whole place was left with a chilling, funeral aura like some ancient, alien graveyard better left undisturbed.

  


Which made the sudden feeling of unseen eyes rather unnerving.

  


Tom gave no outward reaction as he continued to make his way across the damp, pockmarked landscape in the general direction of a massive stone temple. As if stretching his neck, though, he surreptitiously scanned a nearby abandoned structure the feeling seemed to have come from.

  


Nothing was there but dripping gray stone and endless deep shadows for someone to hide in.

  


However, the hairs on the back of his ghostly neck stood up as the feeling of eyes suddenly came from behind him instead.

  


Abandoning subtlety, Tom whirled around to find … nothing. The only thing behind him was an empty gray stretch of scarred, slimy stone.

  


Turning back, he continued his slow, steady trek towards the temple, the constant crunch of salt under his footsteps sounding gratingly loud in the ominous silence as he constantly scanned the buildings he passed in search of his hidden watcher.

  


He tensed as a new sound suddenly appeared, however. Namely, a series of skittering, insect-like clicks of metal on stone coming from somewhere beside him.

  


However, the increasingly agitated being barely jerked his head to the side to scan the empty stone structure the sound seemed to have come from before it started up again on his opposite side.

  


“So … I guess you didn’t all get swept away with the rest of your planet, did you?” he called out, jerking his head from side to side as the clicking sounds kept starting up all around him, only to stop and appear somewhere else moments later.

  


Tom reeled in shock as he glimpsed a glowing blue light staring at him from an empty window, but it was gone a heartbeat later, followed by more of the clicking coming from behind him.

  


He continued walking, growing more tense with every step. One moment, he caught another glimpse of that burning blue light staring at him from the shadows, and the next, he briefly spotted a silvery metal hand clacking its fingers on dripping stonework before vanishing.

  


Finally, he had had enough.

  


“You know, I appreciate theatricality and scare tactics as much as anyone,” he called out before pausing and gaining a thoughtful look on his translucent face. “At least, I think I do,” he added uncertainly, his memories still little more than fleeing images and hazy daydreams at the moment. Shaking himself, however, he continued, still scanning every shadow he passed for signs of the stranger. “But there comes a point where it just becomes exces–”

  


His bravado suddenly cut off with a cry as something struck him from behind, driving him to his knee with a stab of searing agony.

  


Craning his head to look over his shoulder, he was astonished to see that, even ghostly and half-translucent as he was, he still had a sizzling scorch mark the size of his palm driven into the back of his right shoulder.

  


“You can hurt me,” he observed in surprise, his voice ringing out in the sudden deathly silence of the nearly empty wasteland.

  


In response, another brilliant azure laser fired at him from a shadow, forcing him to drop low to the ground to avoid it.

  


“You know, if you want me to leave, all you have to do is show me the door,” he called back, crouching as he looked about warily. “I’d be more than happy to leave you to your little pile of rocks.”

  


As the faint sound of crystalline clinking suddenly reached him, his gaze dropped to the ground just in time to spot two glowing sapphire spheres bouncing to a halt by his feet.

  


His eyes widened.

  


“NO!” he shouted, reaching out his hands as if to stop them just as they erupted in a near-silent explosion of energy.

  


To his astonishment, however, the blast never reached him thanks to a brilliant dome of coruscating emerald light that surrounded him.

  


The shield rippled and disappeared as he lowered and stared at his hands.

  


Once again, another sapphire laser fired at him from an empty window in one of the ruins. This time, though, when he reached out his hands again, he felt a lurching feeling coming from deep inside him as the glittering emerald shield of energy sprung up around him. The stream of brilliant blue energy struck the shield, and immediately deflected, carving a deep trench across the ground. With a viscous grin, he tilted the forcefield, angling the reflected laser to carve through the face of the building it was still coming from.

  


The laser abruptly cut off as the ruined building started collapsing entirely.

  


“It seems you’re not the only one with power here,” he called out to the hiding stranger over the echoing boom of crashing stone.

  


However, a sudden chorus of explosions answered his taunt, and he spun around to see a series of fiery blasts rapidly racing across the ground towards him.

  


With a gulp, he reflexively stepped back, not knowing if his newfound forcefield could hold out against that.

  


Turning, he simply ran, the bursts of heat from the explosions smacking him across the back with almost physical force as the cascading fiery eruptions came closer.

  


However, as he leaped across one of the many chasms spiderwebbing through the broken landscape, he suddenly found himself appearing on a nearby rooftop with a loud cracking sound.

  


Eyes wide, he staggered to recover his balance from the unexpected shift.

  


Behind him, the now distant and comparatively quiet series of explosions silenced completely.

  


Turning, he ducked low and looked out across the landscape from his new elevated position, desperately trying to shove off questions of how that happened so he could focus on dealing with the thing trying to kill him.

  


The faint crunch of salt coming from behind him was all the warning he got.

  


Before he could fully turn around, a cold metal hand seized him by the throat with bruising strength and did so for him.

  


While his vision filled with the sight of gleaming silver and brilliant azure light, however, he reflexively grabbed the unyielding metal arm just as he felt the lurching feeling inside him once again.

  


With a metallic grind, the strange figure released him and staggered away while staring at its unresponsive, spasming arm. As it did, Tom was finally given the opportunity to get a good look at his attacker.

  


It was humanoid, clad in metal armor that almost seemed to flow over its form like quicksilver in shades of matte gray and burnished silver. The whole thing was edged and traced with glowing sapphire light that seemed to originate from an even more brilliant blue light set in the armor’s chest, which he was assuming was a power source of some kind.

  


As the armored stranger’s gaze rose from its seizing left hand to him, it revealed that its smoky-gray helmet’s roughly Y-shaped gleaming silver faceplate featured a slightly V-shaped glowing blue eye slit and what looked like two high-tech, vaguely gasmask-like filters on either side of where its mouth would be. With a final shake of its armored hand, it also revealed a luminous blue disk set in the palms of its gauntlets, which Tom felt was safe to assume functioned as a weapon of some sort. Especially when one of those lights abruptly brightened with a threatening hum as the figure turned back to him.

  


As the figure’s hand raised towards him, however, Tom once again felt that lurch inside, and all of a sudden, the slimy stone roof under their feet came alive, stone tendrils wrapping around the reeling metal figure’s form.

  


Before Tom could capitalize on his opponent’s incapacitation, however, the surface of the figure’s armor lit up with a crackling red light that disintegrated the stone roots entangling it. With more of its eerie silence, the figure tore itself free before stepping forward and kicking Tom square in the chest with a heavy metal boot that, at the last second, Tom noticed bore another glowing blue disk in the sole just like the gauntlets.

  


This was clearly more than decorative, given how the boot struck him with what felt like monstrous force accompanied by a blast of energy that sent him absolutely flying off the rooftop.

  


However, as he tumbled end over end through the brine-filled air, the sight of unforgiving stone spinning closer and closer, he simply stretched out his arms, instantly stopping his fall as he caught himself mid-fall. With a thought, he righted himself and floated up to hover across from the rooftop, where the armored stranger stood even now, staring at him through its expressionless metal mask.

  


Focusing inward, Tom reached for the source of the strange lurching feeling he kept experiencing whenever he used this odd power. With almost no effort whatsoever, he felt power rush through every particle of his body, lighting up his ghostly form and instantly repairing the damage he had sustained from the metal stranger’s attack.

  


Raising a hand, he watched in a mixture of surprise and pleasure as a crackling nexus of swirling green energy gathered in his palm with barely a thought.

  


“Well, what do you know?” he commented to the silver figure silently standing across from him. “I suppose this means it’s my turn, now doesn’t it?”

  


A wicked grin spread across his features.

  


The silver figure made its move at the same time as Tom, blasting off from the roof and firing brilliant sapphire lasers from its gauntlets just as Tom fired two streams of emerald energy from his own hands. The blasts collided in midair, creating a vicious explosion that sent them both flying. However, Tom once gain corrected himself with a mere thought, while the silver figure likewise caught itself easily by firing crackling jets of energy from his gauntlets and boots to counter its spin and immediately launch itself back at Tom.

  


With a wave of his hands, Tom found himself conjuring a roaring wall of fire that raced towards the silver figure. Armored as it was, however, the stranger didn’t even flinch, simply flying straight through it unharmed. At least, until it was struck in the back by a crackling stream of emerald energy, Tom having taken advantage of being temporarily hidden from his opponent’s view to maneuver himself higher in the sky.

  


Still silent, the silver stranger was driven into a deep, crushing furrow in the harsh stone floor.

  


Waving his hands once again, Tom used his strange new power to seal up the rift, cold gray rock flowing like water to entomb the silver figure alive.

  


Looking at his hands, Tom laughed in delight at the ease with which this odd power came to him, making his every thought a reality.

  


Below the floating, spirit-like being, however, the ground rumbled before erupting in an explosion of stone shards as the silent metal figure freed itself. Now, however, the figure’s armor bore a pair of strange-looking turrets that rose up from behind its shoulders to point directly at Tom.

  


As they fired at him, Tom didn’t bother telling his power exactly what to do. He simply waved his hands and cut it loose, and it transformed the racing missiles into paper airplanes.

  


As their fight continued, Tom marveled at the nature of his power. When he desired it to, it obeyed his every thought and command without struggle. But even when he gave his power the reins, it still worked with him like some primal but inherently loyal and obedient force. He told his power to slam a broken stretch of wall into the flying silver figure, and it did so. He simply cut it loose to deal with the pulsing blue spheres his opponent lobbed at him, and it transformed them into snowglobes or deflected them back at the armored figure or did a myriad of other seemingly random or bizarre things that Tom didn’t even know were possible, but no matter what it did, it always seemed to be something that helped him, or protected him.

  


In short, he absolutely _loved_ his newfound power.

  


Unfortunately, his opponent wasn’t exactly powerless either.

  


He’d catch the armored figure in a lasso made of fire, only for the figure’s armor to suddenly light up with crackling electricity that raced along that lasso to strike Tom like a bolt of lightning, nearly knocking him out of the sky. He’d force the figure into a fighting retreat as he bombarded it with blast after blast of brilliant green energy, only to find himself slammed into the ground as he unknowingly passed over a small device the armored figure had dropped that absolutely wrenched at the gravity all around him.

  


Back and forth they went, brutally decimating the ruined landscape and ancient buildings as they bombarded each other in wave after wave of sheer relentless fury, the armored stranger remaining unnervingly silent through it all. However, after a while, things took an unexpected turn.

  


After one of their many bouts, Tom was sent hurtling to the cold, unforgiving stone ground, bouncing and rolling to a slow, painful stop. Immediately, he shook off the pain and drew more deeply on his power, feeling the various burns and lacerations crossing his ghostly body fade away as he glowed more brightly. However, the forcefield he reflexively put up didn’t come under immediate fire.

  


This was … _odd_ , given that up until that point, the silver figure had been almost robotically merciless in attacking relentlessly any time an opening even halfway presented itself.

  


Shaking his head to clear the dizziness from his recent tumble, Tom finally spotted his curiously inactive foe. The armored stranger was floating in the air, gauntlets glowing brightly as it clearly waited for Tom to make the first move. And for a moment, he very nearly obliged. However, at the last moment, he held himself back, too curious about the sudden shift in his opponent’s behavior to just brush it off.

  


By all appearances, the armored stranger was waiting for him to fly up and attack, but that didn’t make sense. The stranger had been unwaveringly on the offensive for their entire fight, even to the point of having started the fight in the first place, so why deliberately assume the defensive all of a sudden? It wasn’t because the stranger was all that worse for wear. Any damage he managed to inflict on the rat bastard’s fancy silver armor repaired itself almost before his eyes, and the figure didn’t seem to be running low on power, either, so what was the deal?

  


As Tom shifted his feet slightly, he suddenly became aware of where he was standing.

  


He was on the steps that led to the giant stone temple, the doors of which were now only a few meters behind him.

  


And the silver stranger was trying to lead him away from it.

  


His eyes lit up in realization, and his lips twisted in a smirk.

  


Without warning, he thrust his arms forward, aiming at the ground beneath the hovering figure. Immediately, that ground erupted in more giant tendrils that wrapped around the armored figure. Unlike before, though, they struck with the harsh clang of metal on metal, shifting from dull gray rock to shining steel halfway between the ground and the stranger’s struggling form.

  


Immediately, the figure’s armor lit up with the same crackling red light as before, but it wasn’t able to disintegrate the massive steel tendrils quite as quickly as it did stone.

  


And Tom only needed seconds.

  


The struggling figure never made a sound, but when it saw what Tom was doing, it still redoubled its efforts with an almost panicked desperation.

  


But it was too late. With one glowing hand, Tom transmuted the enormous metal doors to thick, smoky glass, and with the other hand, he shattered them.

  


For a moment, deathly stillness seemed to grip the world as the demolished doors fell to the ground with a cacophonous crash and the almost innocent tinkling of shattering glass.

  


Behind him, the armored stranger simply hovered there, freed from Tom’s trap, but still utterly motionless as it stared at the yawning, darkened entrance to the temple.

  


“Just thought I’d see what it was you were protecting,” Tom boasted smugly, preparing to fight the armored stranger every step of the way as he explored the mysterious ruin it had apparently been defending.

  


To his surprise, however, the silver figure simply turned and fled with a thunderous crackle of thrusters turned to their absolute limit.

  


“That … can’t be a good sign,” Tom observed in unease as he watched the figure’s brilliant blue trail rapidly disappear over the broken horizon.

  


Of course, the bone-shaking, rumbling growl that suddenly echoed out from the depths of the shadowy temple was far more disturbing.

  


“And that is _definitely_ not a good sign,” he commented, nervously stepping back from the entrance.

  


Witnessing a blur of motion deep inside the temple, Tom took a leaf out of the armored stranger’s book and burst into flight, intent on gaining as much distance as possible from whatever was lurking inside that temple. Unfortunately, he had barely made it off the ground before something struck him from behind with inhuman force, sending him careening wildly across the sky before he could correct himself and turn to see what had hit him.

  


With just a glance, the silver stranger’s behavior suddenly made perfect sense.

  


A roiling dark mass of inky black dust and crackling streams of violet energy absolutely poured through the temple’s broken doorway like water thundering through a crack in a dam. Worse than that, though, Tom watched in wide-eyed horror as the swirling, amorphous _thing_ began to tear into everything around it, digging deeply into the crumbling stone floor and shredding through the ancient structures and craggy spires. Everything it touched was quickly reduced to little more than dust and shattered rubble tossed about through the air like cyclones, and all the while, the creature’s unfathomable form still raced through the temple doors and spread farther and farther through the broken landscape with a mindless fury.

  


“ _An obscurus_ ,” Tom breathed, remembering the shapeless, dust-like creature that came from the boy, which now looked looked like a mere dust bunny in the face of the colossal sand-storm that was this monstrosity.

  


With a jolt, Tom saw a massive column of the eldritch creature’s form snap out to strike at his floating form. With a thought, however, Tom teleported, reappearing much farther away in the sky. This reprieve proved disturbingly short-lived, though, as the ravenous creature continued to race across and through the landscape like waves from a devastating explosion.

  


Turning, Tom pushed his power to the maximum, flying away from the feral, storm-like creature. Unfortunately, as more and more of its ungodly massive form was released from the old temple, it spread even more quickly, until he was forced to constantly teleport himself farther and farther away in order to keep out of its reach, all the while hearing the creature’s shrieking cries and the thundering roar of crumbling stone racing closer.

  


_And closer_.

  


All of a sudden, however, he was brought up short as he caught a fleeting glimpse of something half-hidden in the rocky landscape blurring past him.

  


A crumbling stone archway tucked into a narrow crack in a cliff.

  


For an interminable moment, he hesitated as he watched the massive, torrential creature shredding its way through everything in its path like a racing dark tidal wave, only to turn and eye the ancient-looking archway that waited disturbingly close to it.

  


Groaning, he turned around.

  


Massive columns of pure, enraged force streamed from the creature’s rapidly encroaching form to launch themselves at the flying figure, forcing him to duck and weave and veer about wildly, those amorphous, violet-hued limbs practically brushing against him as he put everything he had into racing towards that archway, all the while watching as the bulk of the creature’s body streamed closer and closer to it like a bloodthirsty avalanche. Worse than that, with everything so chaotic, he couldn’t even teleport safely, since he couldn’t be sure that this very new power of his wouldn’t land him directly in front of one of those massive, violent tendrils. So he flew.

  


A furious yell began to tear itself free from his throat as he pushed his power into overdrive, the craggy ground beneath him blurring as his reckless, headlong flight brought him closer and closer to the archway.

  


And to the roiling black wave of destruction.

  


With one final, tremendous push from his power, he shot through that archway like a bullet from a gun mere heartbeats before the shapeless behemoth crashed through the area, utterly decimating everything in its path as it continued its rampage across the planet, unstoppable and unsatisfied.

  


The being known as Tom Riddle saw none of this, though. He had made it through the exit, and on to whatever weirdness awaited him in the next leg of his odd trek through the astral plane.

  


* * *

  


**A Malibu highway**

  


Wind ripped through Tony’s hair as he raced home, the engine of his sports car roaring as he very thoroughly broke pretty much every road law there was. Words couldn’t really express how little he cared at that moment, though. As his car hurtled down the highway, his mind kept flashing back to that hospital room, and Harry’s bandaged, comatose form.

  


Sixteen. Just sixteen years old, and the kid was already playing ding dong ditch with death’s door. Other people went their entire lives without ever even really experiencing true violence in person, eventually dying peacefully of a heart attack or some embarrassing disease once they had officially reached older-than-dirt status. That’s how it was supposed to be. It was simply the natural order.

  


But Harry? He was lying in a hospital bed clinging to life after his second near-death encounter in as many days. And why? Was the kid just a magnet for trouble, drawing these homicidal lunatics out of the woodwork?

  


No. He wasn’t. The answer was actually much simpler than that.

  


It was because of the man whose last name he shared.

  


Vanko. This “Mandarin” guy. Both of them had been after _him_ , trying to take down the mighty Iron Man because of some vendetta or for the notoriety or for who the hell cares. And both times, Harry had gotten caught in the crossfire, and been the one to pay the price that, by all accounts, had been his own to pay.

  


And now … there wasn’t any telling how high the price was that the kid was paying right this second. He hadn’t been lying to Pepper and the others, after all. Who knew what kind of effects it would have on someone to experience that much reactor energy tearing through their body and cooking their brain in their skull? The kid could find himself with dementia, or amnesia. He could just end up with a severe case of the general crazies, yelling at plants and insisting everyone call him Mrs. Nesbitt.

  


He could end up a vegetable that simply stared at the ceilings and enjoyed a fine meal of IV fluids three times a day, trapped forever as little more than a living corpse.

  


Fathers were supposed to protect their sons. He could swear he’d read about it. They were supposed to skip baseball games, and be as humiliating as possible in front of their kid’s friends. They were supposed to tell bad jokes, and complain to their kids about how much harder things were back in their day, and they were supposed to give their kid all the advice they could about how to get through life, whether the kid wanted to hear it or not.

  


_Especially_ if the kid didn’t want to hear it, actually.

  


They weren’t supposed to stand helplessly next to their son’s burned, broken body while staring numbly at a horrifyingly dark brain wave test. They weren’t supposed to be so desperate to escape thoughts about how their own son might have already died in every way that really mattered, no matter how his heart was still technically beating, that they actually found it _comforting_ to focus on the kid’s missing arm, because _that_ , at least, they could do something– _anything!_ –about, designs for mechanical prosthetics running through their head of their own volition.

  


They weren’t supposed to sit in a chair drinking gritty hospital coffee and knowing in their heart of hearts that it was all their fault, that it had been _their_ fight, and if they had just kept their son out of it, none of this would have happened.

  


They weren’t supposed to know that by rights, it should have been their own egotistical, already dying ass in that hospital bed instead of their annoying, workaholic son who still had his whole life ahead of him.

  


But as Tony gunned his nearly racecar-level engine, it wasn’t really anguish that he was feeling, or self-pity, or even grief.

  


It was _rage_.

  


And mere minutes ago, the Mandarin had given him the most precious gift he may have ever received.

  


A target.

  


He didn’t know who the Mandarin was. He didn’t know what he was planning, or what he could do. Hell, he didn’t even know what the man _wanted_. But he did know one thing:

  


He didn’t care.

  


That son of a bitch had put his son in the hospital. As much as he blamed himself for Harry having been there, every time he pictured the kid’s unconscious body, it was the Mandarin’s face that flashed through his mind. And every time it did, a fresh pulse of raging fury swept through his veins, making his foot push the gas pedal just a little closer to the floor as his hands cramped from their death-grip on the wheel.

  


That bastard thought he had him pegged, thought “the great Tony Stark” was nothing more than an arrogant showboat in a shiny suit of armor.

  


And he was. All that and more. But at the moment, it wasn’t the genius that the Mandarin was facing. It wasn’t the billionaire, or the playboy, and it certainly wasn’t the philanthropist. It wasn’t even Iron Man.

  


It was the father.

  


And he was going to avenge his son. In the bloodiest, most violent way he could think of.

  


But for that, he was going to need his armor.

  


The engine roared on that Malibu highway as Tony raced home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone :) I’ve decided to change up how I update my stories for a while. Rather than update each one with a single chapter or two before alternating to another story, I’ve decided to stick with one story at a time, producing several chapters for it before moving on to focus on the next. This should help me improve my rate of output, as trying to alternate between stories has been just murder on my focus and motivation. So you can expect several more chapters for this story before I move on for a bit. In fact, the next is already about 90% written (it having originally been part of this same chapter), so it should be posted in just a few days.
> 
> Also, if you’re the type who likes reference images to better picture something, the helmet for the armor that Tom faces in this chapter is based on the helmet from the Blood Dragon armor from Mass Effect.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and see you next time :)


	8. Riddle me this 2: Electric boogaloo

**Elsewhere**

  


Overhead, a deep red sun burned brightly over a nearly empty city street.

  


Its lone resident, Tom, groaned loudly. “Can I please just go home?” he begged aloud. “I mean … wherever home is, exactly.”

  


This memory loss he was dealing with was almost as annoying as his stupid trek through the astral plane. However, he didn’t know what else he could do other than continue on until he found the exit in the hopes of finally finding his way out of here and back to … wherever it was he belonged.

  


Wherever it was he needed to go, the pit in his stomach was telling him to hurry.

  


In the meantime, though, he was stuck in an empty street framed by towering skyscrapers made of glass and steel. So he did the only thing he could think of.

  


He walked.

  


And walked.

  


… _And walked_.

  


Nothing. Just more buildings and the empty clack of his shoes echoing down the street as the ghostly being continued walking.

  


Finally, he just stopped.

  


“Really? Nothing?” he demanded. “It’s bad enough I’m stuck in this bizarre dream world, but now nothing is even going to happen?”

  


Groaning, he reached up and rubbed his temple, feeling warm skin under his fingers even with his translucent appearance. Frowning, he tried to make sense of things.

  


When this whole thing started, that one ghost had called this place the astral plane. But what exactly did that mean for him? Was he a ghost? Was he dead, and this his afterlife? Why couldn’t he remember anything? Even wracking his brain, all he could come up with were fleeting images with no context, and his name, Tom Riddle. There weren’t any details. He didn’t know where he came from, or how he ended up here. He didn’t even know where he was trying to go. He simply had this unceasing impulse to leave this place, as if there was somewhere terribly important he had to get back to.

  


His eyes narrowed. If this was the astral plane … and assuming he wasn’t _dead_ , which was an assumption he simply had to make, if only for his own peace of mind … then maybe he had suffered some kind of trauma or something, and his spirit had been knocked out of his body. Maybe his memory loss was somehow connected to that.

  


Maybe … maybe if he got his memories back, he’d be able to pull himself together enough to get the hell out of here.

  


At the very least, recovering his memories was a start. But how was he supposed to do that?

  


Groaning, he started rubbing his temples more aggressively as he tried and failed to come up with a solution. However, he suddenly stopped and pulled his ghost-like hands down to stare at them.

  


If this was some kind of spiritual dimension … then what if it was connected to him? He seemed to be a spirit, and if the astral plane was a _realm_ of spirits, then by being here … maybe he was helping to shape it? Why else would he seem to be standing in the middle of a city street, of all things? And … the physical world was crafted from physical matter, built out of dirt and trees and stone. So the spiritual plane … it had to be constructed out of spiritual matter somehow, right? After all, he wasn’t just floating around in some nebulous void. This place had shape, and texture. And just as the physical world could be shaped by its inhabitants through physical means, with people building and tearing down things, then maybe the astral plane was also shaped by its inhabitants, but in ways that were more … _abstract_. Maybe it somehow reflected its own spiritual visitors, making them and their thoughts a part of its reality.

  


Maybe all the weird things he had experienced had been the result of his own confused mind reaching out and subconsciously shaping the world around him just like the strange power he had recently discovered allowed him to shape it consciously.

  


And if he combined the two …

  


Closing his eyes, he reached down to his core, finding that odd new power and letting it fill him, causing his transparent green form to glow more and more brightly until the street around him lost its gentle ruby glow from the sun overhead and instead glittered like it was crafted from emerald.

  


Slowly opening his eyes, he extended his luminous hands while focusing on one of those vague shadows of memory he felt floating around in his mind.

  


To his delight and amazement, the world around him started shifting.

  


Colossal buildings and stretches of sky slowly spun in place as if they were nothing more than images reflected on enormous mirrors arrayed all around him, thinning to nothing as they continued their rotation, before gently revealing strikingly different images on the other side as they steadily and silently spun into place.

  


As the last enormous spectral mirror finished rotating and the final cracks in the world around him sealed, Tom grinned victoriously, looking around at what looked like the hallway of an ancient stone castle.

  


More interestingly, he wasn’t alone. All around him, robed teenagers streamed through old-fashioned wooden doors and began thronging through the ancient hallways.

  


“A school? In a castle?” Tom wondered in bemusement, barely flinching as several of the students, if students they were, passed through his ghost-like form on their way down the crowded hallway. “Interesting choice.”

  


“Merlin, you were _incredible_ in class today!” a student in a nearby cluster praised one of his fellows.

  


“Why, thank you, Nott,” an eerily familiar voice replied in a smooth, if slightly condescending, tone.

  


Wide-eyed, Tom watched as the bobbing heads of students parted enough to reveal … Tom.

  


The tall, slender teen striding confidently down the hallway surrounded by nearly fawning classmates … was him. The same hair, the same controlled gait, he was even wearing the same neatly pressed uniform as the teen, albeit without the black robe.

  


“Am I a genius, or am I a genius?” the spectral visitor proudly boasted to himself as he watched the living memory play out around him, hopefully helping to jog the rest of his memories in the process.

  


  
“The professor hadn’t even shown us that spell yet!” one of his double’s apparent sycophants pointed out excitedly. “How did you get it so perfect on the first try?”

  


“Quite simple, really,” his double explained. “I had already taught it to myself back in our first year.”

  


From the expressions of the toadies around him, this was evidently a rather impressive feat.

  


“Allow me to offer you some insight,” his double offered as they continued down the hallway, their spectral visitor following closely behind. “The things we’re learning here? They’re not just how to pass tests, or find careers, or become _productive members of society_.”

  


His double’s eye roll was practically audible on that last part, but he wasn’t done.

  


“What we’re truly learning here,” he continued, “is _power_.” His voice sounded nearly worshipful on that word, but he continued on. “ _That’s_ what magic truly is, after all. _Power_. The power to make change, and to shape reality as you see fit.” He chuckled. “You could say that, as wizards, power is our very birthright. _I_ would argue that it’s in fact our obligation, and it’s one I take very, _very_ seriously.”

  


Many of the starry-eyed boys clustered around him nodded in fervent agreement with this claim, but his double seemed to spot a silent dissenter in their ranks. “You disagree?” he asked the boy.

  


The boy shrugged. “I just don’t see what’s so great about power,” he replied. “I mean, what difference does it make?”

  


The other boys seemed to feel he had spoken blasphemy, but his double simply smiled. “Why, power makes all the difference in the world, my friend.” As the entranced boys turned back to him, he continued. “When you study the history of our world, you realize that its really a story of power. Who had it, and who didn’t, but had the courage to seek it. Those people went on to shape the very fabric of our world. In the process, they became something more than mortal. They became _legends_ , immortalized and revered, while the powerless … well, they became less than footnotes in their wake. They became … _nothing_.” His double sounded like he was nearly preaching by now. “The lust for power is in our very blood. That insatiable hunger to leave a mark on the world, to shape and mold it, is the fire that drives us, _enslaves_ us, makes us more than simply animals. Those who would claim otherwise are simply too weak or cowardly to admit it.” He chuckled. “As much as the weak hate it, the drive for power is the very essence of what it means to be human.”

  


His double’s charming grin turned decidedly hungry as he continued. “And I personally aim to be far more than mere human.”

  


As the cluster of students continued down the hallway, however, their spectral visitor remained behind.

  


“Obsession, thy name is … me, I guess,” he commented aloud after hearing the other him raving about power. “Lovely.”

  


Sighing, he turned and headed in the other direction.

  


“So I’ve apparently got a bit of a power complex, and a fondness for surrounding myself with fawning lackeys,” he observed unhappily as he walked. “That’s just fantastic.”

  


Stopping, he stood in the same place he had appeared in the hallway to begin with. He had no idea if that mattered, but it seemed fitting regardless.

  


Focusing, he drew on his power while centering his mind on another shadowy memory. Pushing outwards with his glowing hands, he watched as, once again, the image of the world around him broke down as if nothing but reflections on a series of giant mirrors as they slowly spun in place, bringing with them a different image.

  


However, when they settled, the image they revealed was not too dissimilar from the previous one, given that he still seemed to be in the same castle, with its hard gray stone walls and floor. This time, though, he was standing in a rather lushly furnished room that practically oozed comfort and indulgence, with plush, squashy-looking chairs and boxes of sweets squirreled away on more than one richly tooled wooden table. Sharing the room with him was a somewhat opulent-looking older man wearing a smoking jacket and pouring himself a sherry, doubtless the owner of the room. And somewhat unsurprisingly, Tom’s double was there as well. Given the dozen or so plates littered with the remains of what looked like a sumptuous meal, he assumed that his double was here as a straggler from some kind of dinner party.

  


However, his host didn’t seem to be aware his double was still there, which his double corrected by stepping forward and appearing to admire a rather odd-looking hourglass before gently tapping on it with a fingernail, producing a clear, musical chime.

  


“Oh. Look sharp, Tom. Wouldn’t want to be caught out of bed after hours,” the older fellow good-naturedly chided upon spotting his straggling double. However, the teen simply stood there silently, a thoughtful, if slightly hesitant, look on his face, as if debating with himself about saying something. “Something on your mind, Tom?” the older man asked in familiar concern, apparently noticing the same thing.

  


“Yes, sir,” his double answered, apparently choosing his words carefully. “You see, I couldn’t think of anyone else to go to. The other professors … well … they’re not like you. They might … _misunderstand_.”

  


“Oh, good, I’m a brown-nosing tool. This just gets better and better,” the spectral visitor complained quietly as he watched his double’s behavior.

  


“Go on,” the older fellow prompted, intrigued and clearly not put off at all.

  


The teen began stepping towards the fireplace as he continued, his smooth, controlled gait a stark contrast to the hesitancy in his words. “I was in the library the other night. In the restricted section. And … I read something rather odd about a bit of rare magic. It’s called, as I understand it … a horcrux.”

  


From the look on the professor’s face, this was clearly the last thing he had expected to hear. “I … beg your pardon?” he asked, his voice both deeply astonished and fairly disturbed.

  


“That’s got to be a good sign,” their spectral audience commented to himself.

  


“Horcrux,” his double clarified for his increasingly disturbed-looking professor. “I came across the term while reading, but … I don’t fully understand it.”

  


His professor was evidently not comforted by the fact that he hadn’t misheard the boy. “I’m not sure what you were reading, Tom, but this is very dark stuff. Very dark indeed,” the nervous professor told him, likely in the hopes of getting his double to abandon the conversation.

  


The teen, however, never even flinched, simply maintaining his steady gaze at the professor. “Which is … why I came to you,” the boy explained, his polite but utterly unwavering expression all but insisting that he would not be leaving without answers.

  


Answers, it seemed, that his professor was willing to provide, for all his discomfort. “A horcrux … is an object in which a person has concealed a part of their soul.”

  


Their ghostly eavesdropper felt a sudden bolt of alarm run through him upon hearing those quietly uttered words.

  


“But … I don’t understand how that works, sir,” the teen admitted, clearly not at all surprised by the explanation as he stepped towards the professor in undeniable interest.

  


“One splits one’s soul and hides part of it in an object,” the professor reluctantly explained, clearly hating the entire conversation, but unwilling to turn the boy away. “In doing so, you are protected, should you be attacked and your body destroyed.”

  


Riddle’s face was completely expressionless. “Protected?” he asked quietly.

  


“Oh, please tell me you didn’t,” their audience begged upon spotting the almost ravenous light in the teen’s eyes.

  


“The part of your soul that is hidden keeps you bound to this world,” the uncomfortable professor said. “In other words … you cannot die.”

  


As the professor spoke those words, a torrent of emotion ran through his double’s dark eyes, which the teen seemed to try to hide by turning to the fireplace.

  


“And how does one split his soul, sir?” the teen asked quietly, crushing any hope his spectral observer had that he _hadn’t_ made one of those things.

  


“I think you already know the answer to that,” his professor replied, troubled eyes fixed on the teen’s back.

  


And sure enough, he was right.

  


“ _Murder_ ,” the teen whispered, gently fondling a strange black ring he wore.

  


“Yes,” the professor confirmed, his voice sounding hoarse. “Murder rips the soul apart. It is a violation against nature.”

  


With those words, the disturbed professor seemed to relax slightly, clearly certain that the horrid conversation had run its course.

  


He was about to be disabused.

  


“And … can you split the soul only once, sir?” the teen asked quietly, still fondling his ring. “For instance, isn’t seven–”

  


“ _Seven_?! Merlin’s beard, Tom!” the professor exclaimed in abject horror. “Isn’t it bad enough to consider killing one person? To rip the soul into seven pieces …” The look on his face said he was wondering if he had ever truly known this boy in the first place. “This is all hypothetical, isn’t it, Tom? All academic?” he asked, an almost pleading tone in his voice.

  


The teen turned around, his face schooled into a polite mask. “Of course, sir,” he assured the man, his darkly glittering eyes giving voice to the lie in this words. “It’ll be our little secret,” he promised.

  


By the professor’s expression, he couldn’t quite make himself believe the boy, no matter how much he wanted to.

  


Their spiritual eavesdropper barely saw it, though. He was stepping through the back wall and passing into the shadowed hallway outside. As he continued down the labyrinthine stone corridors, his ears kept ringing from the conversation he had just overheard, and his eyes were fixed on his ghostly hands.

  


“I made those things,” he tried to process. “I … is that why I’m here? Did I do all that? Did I murder seven different people just to tear and mutilate my own soul?” He shook his head as he tried to come to terms with what he might have done. “Was I really that stupid? That _blind_? I killed at least—at least!--seven innocent people, and in the end … who even knows what kind of effects doing something like that would have on the rest of your soul? To have it so twisted and mangled and _broken_?” Barely noticing, he passed through the doors of the castle and strode across a massive, rolling green lawn leading towards a glassy black lake. “Is that why my memory is so shattered?” he asked himself. “Is it because of what I did to my own soul? Or was I killed, and this is what happens when you have a horcrux keeping you from just passing on?”

  


As he stood there, staring out across a lake that shone like a black mirror as it reflected the glittering stars overhead, he finally asked the question that was really haunting him. “Do I even want the rest of my memories back?”

  


He had seen the look in his double’s eyes when they were talking about horcruxes. He never even flinched when the professor explained how they were made … or what it cost. He just … didn’t care.

  


Is that what he’d see next? If he made this place reenact another of his shadowy memories, would he see himself murdering some innocent person just to mutilate his own soul? Would he be seeing something even worse? After all, someone who could discuss the topic of murder so casually even as a teenager … someone who could even say the word “murder” with the kind of quiet relish that his double had seemed to … what else might he be willing to do?

  


What else might he have _enjoyed_ doing?

  


Groaning, he scrubbed his hands through his hair, tousling the neatly parted ghostly locks and turning them into a wild mess as he struggled with the fear of what he might see next.

  


After a moment, though, he realized he had already made a decision.

  


He was terrified of what he might see, but … he needed to know. Even if he could get out of here without recovering his memories, he couldn’t spend the rest of his life wondering what he might have done.

  


He didn’t want to know. But he _needed_ to know.

  


And so, as every fiber of his non-being begged him to drag his feet, he hesitantly focused on another hazy impression of a memory as he reshaped reality around him, the world breaking apart into images on giant mirrors that slowly pivoted, revealing a very different image on the other side.

  


A very, _very_ different image.

  


“What is this, a nursery?” he asked aloud as he looked around at the warm-looking room he was standing in, the floor of which was strewn with toys suitable for a very small child, leading the way like bread crumbs to a crib, in which a black-haired infant was sitting while a red-haired woman knelt at the side mumbling something to him.

  


“Why am I here?” Tom asked curiously, not seeing a double of him anywhere.

  


His gaze returned to the infant.

  


“Is that … is that _me_?” he wondered incredulously. Strange as that would be, as he reflected on it, he supposed it shouldn’t necessarily be that unexpected. He was dealing with random memories scattered through his subconscious, after all. They wouldn’t necessarily all be in chronological order, so why shouldn’t he end up encountering some from his childhood?

  


Upon stepping closer to the crib, though, and spotting the child’s bright green eyes, he realized he wasn’t looking at a younger version of himself.

  


“Hey, it’s that kid from the crater,” he noted in surprise. “Huh. This must be from before he leveled his house with that obscurus thing.”

  


However, just as he started wondering why he was seeing a memory of this kid, and from there, just why he’d experienced so many of them earlier, he caught sight of the red-haired woman’s face.

  


She was terrified.

  


With her hair, she might have always had a pale complexion, but now, she looked downright _ghostly_ , which was saying a lot, coming from him. One of her hands was even trembling from where she was clutching the side of the crib, but her eyes, the same shape and color as the child’s, were absolutely steady as she reached out one thumb smeared with blood and gently painted something on the child’s forehead, making the infant giggle as her touch tickled him. Her face, however, said humor was the last thing on her mind just then.

  


“ _Blood for blood_ ,” she whispered, “ _soul for soul_.” Her steady, determined green eyes welled with tears that didn’t fall. “ _My life for yours_.”

  


Pulling her thumb away, she revealed what looked like a lightning bolt painted on the child’s forehead.

  


Leaning forward, she gave her child a lingering kiss on top of his messy black hair.

  


“ _I love you, Harry,_ ” she promised, tears finally falling down her cheeks as the bloody mark disappeared from the boy’s face.

  


Tom jumped as a pained scream suddenly sounded from somewhere outside the door to the room, before it suddenly cut off with a deathly finality.

  


The woman flinched as if a blade had been driven deep into her heart, but she simply kissed the boy once more on the forehead where she had painted the strange mark.

  


Rising from her knees, she stood and turned to face the door with steel in her spine and resolve in her eyes.

  


In the sudden silence of the room, the faint metal click of the door’s latch seemed to echo as loudly as any scream. However, the door itself swung open in dead silence, gliding on oiled hinges as it slowly revealed a tall, shadowy figure standing on the other side.

  


The woman’s chin raised slightly as the robed and hooded figure glided into the room with a smooth, serpentine grace that seemed oddly familiar to Tom.

  


The woman never flinched as the robed figure stepped closer to her.

  


As for the figure himself, he drew to a stop as he stared down at the woman from eyes hidden deep inside the shadows of his hood.

  


By the chuckle that emanated from it afterward, however, he was apparently amused by the woman’s bravado.

  


“ _Stand aside, Lily_ ,” the figure commanded her, amusement and thinly veiled impatience audible in the figure’s odd, almost hiss-like voice.

  


Curiously enough, though, Tom could swear something about that voice was also familiar to him, though he couldn’t figure out why.

  


“Take me instead,” the woman told him, not budging.

  


For a moment, silence answered her near order, but soon, more quiet chuckling echoed out from that cavernous hood.

  


The woman finally flinched as two thin, unnaturally pale hands emerged from folds in the robe, rising to the edges of that black hood to gently lower it to the figure’s shoulders with long, spider-like fingers.

  


“Ew,” Tom eloquently described the vision unveiled to them all.

  


The figure was utterly hairless, and his skin was deathly pale, with a slightly scaly, almost snakeskin-like pattern to it.

  


Worse than that, the figure’s nose was mere slits in his face, while his utterly inhuman, snake-like eyes glared at the room with a murderous red glow.

  


“ _Do you expect to bargain with Lord Voldemort?_ ” the figure asked her, the sibilant hiss in his voice more prominent than ever with his ghastly visage revealed.

  


The woman looked on his face with horror and disgust, but stood her ground anyway. “Please, don’t kill Harry,” she begged. “Take me instead.”

  


By the expression on Voldemort’s face, he had never encountered a temerity like this woman’s. However, all he did was smile, thin lips pulling back to reveal glittering white teeth.

  


“ _Well well_ ,” he commented. “ _Even if I hadn’t promised one of my most loyal followers to try and spare your life, I might be tempted to do so anyway. Such courage is a terribly rare commodity these days._ ”

  


Again, Tom was struck with a disturbing sense of familiarity as he listened to the figure’s voice, and the smooth, cultured tones that subtly underlay his monstrous hissing.

  


However, he was distracted from this thought as Voldemort produced a pale, bone-handled wand from his sleeve.

  


“ _Stand aside, girl_ ,” he ordered the woman. “ _You know you can’t stop me._ ”

  


The woman simply shook her head.

  


The figure seemed taken aback by her refusal. “ _I am Lord Voldemort_ ,” he said, almost incredulous. “ _I wield power you cannot fathom. You are less than nothing before me. But I,_ _being a gracious lord,_ _am offering you the chance to stand aside and live. And yet you refuse to take it?_ ”

  


The woman swallowed, and nodded. “Harry’s my son,” she said. “I’ll never stand aside.”

  


Voldemort’s ravenous red eyes still seemed confused, but the way his fingers tightened on the handle of his wand spoke of rage.

  


“ _So be it_ ,” he spat as he raised his wand at her. “ _Avada Kedavra!_ ”

  


An emerald bolt of light raced towards her, and the woman’s eyes closed in calm acceptance.

  


And satisfaction.

  


As the sickly green light struck her, Tom’s eyes widened as a blue, translucent copy of the woman that seemed fairly similar to his own form was violently torn away from her body to vanish into thin air, while her physical body was left to fall to the floor, lifeless.

  


Of even greater surprise to Tom, though, the mark the woman had painted on the child’s forehead suddenly became visible once again, emitting a pale, ghostly glow that was the same shade of the woman’s eyes, or his own astral body.

  


However, the robed man never reacted, suggesting this glow was only visible in the astral plane, and not the mundane one. Instead, the wizard simply stared at the fallen woman for a moment.

  


“ _Yet another_ _choosing to be_ _less_ _than a footnote in history_ ,” Voldemort muttered in disgust. “ _Pathetic_.”

  


A chill ran down Tom’s spine at those words, and at how he recognized them from what his double had been preaching to all those students earlier.

  


_That’s_ why this … _monster_ in front of him felt so familiar, why his gait and his voice kept ringing bells in his head. This … this was _him_.

  


“You’re … _me_ ,” Tom whispered in horror.

  


His mind reeled as he tried to reconcile this monstrous being with himself, and with the handsome, charming teenage double of himself he had watched speak with a professor just minutes ago.

  


If it wasn’t for the bells of familiarity constantly ringing in his own head, he wouldn’t be able to believe they were one and the same. That … he became this thing. His voice, his appearance, his _everything_ … it all seemed like some perversion of himself. Of _humanity_.

  


“Is this … is this what happens to someone who gives up so much of their soul?” Tom asked, horror and disgust warring for dominance inside him as he looked at this _thing_. “Or … or did I do other things, _worse_ things, to make myself into this?”

  


Voldemort finally raised his serpentine red eyes from his latest victim to the infant standing in his crib.

  


“What am I?” Tom whispered as Voldemort casually stepped over the woman’s body and glided towards the child.

  


For a moment, Voldemort simply stood there, staring down into the large, confused eyes of the small child.

  


His grip tightened on the bone handle of his wand.

  


“No,” Tom begged. “Oh, please, _no_.”

  


Like a rising guillotine, Voldemort’s arm slowly lifted until his wand was pointed directly at the child’s face.

  


“I don’t want to see this. I don’t want this memory,” Tom whispered. However, for all his horror, he couldn’t look away, either.

  


He _had_ to see.

  


“ _And so ends prophecy_ ,” Voldemort said quietly as his wand lit up in a green glow. “ _AVADA KEDAVRA!_ ”

  


Just as with the woman, a sickly green light launched from the wand to strike at the boy.

  


Once it touched him, though, things took a different turn.

  


The glowing green rune lighting up the boy’s forehead suddenly turned blinding, and the sickly green light was deflected back at Voldemort, absolutely tearing through his body with a torrential wave of blistering light that continued on to blast a cavernous hole through the roof and wall behind him.

  


But that wasn’t all. As Tom tripped over his own feet and lay half-sprawled on the ground, watching this all with wide, astonished eyes, he witnessed a terrible, hideous … _thing_ being driven out of Voldemort’s disintegrating body. The lightly glowing image was nearly black, like putrefied flesh, and it was small, almost infant-like, even, but bearing Voldemort’s face, and with a body that looked half-skinned and horribly disfigured.

  


Worse than that, though, it was cracked, with lines spiderwebbing all across its mutilated form like it was made of glass that was slowly coming apart. In fact, as it was wracked by the reflected blast of Voldemort’s own spell, Tom watched as a piece of the thing tore off, left behind as the rest of the horrible thing was whisked away, torn through one of the surviving walls as if connected to a bungee.

  


Where the rest of that thing was being pulled to, Tom didn’t know, and at the moment, he didn’t particularly care. He was busy watching as that sheared-off portion of the hideous thing floated towards the bleeding mark on the child’s head, burrowing its way deep inside like a parasite mindlessly digging its way into an open wound before finally vanishing from sight.

  


As things stilled, the spectral witness to the event slowly climbed to his feet, turning from the empty robes and abandoned wand on what remained of the floor to the crib, where the child lay, unconscious, but breathing, and with a freely bleeding mark on his forehead where the woman had drawn the strange rune.

  


As he looked down at the child, Tom gave a quick snort of amusement. “I guess the woman got the last laugh after all,” he remarked.

  


He had no idea what she did, or how it worked, but she had laid a trap that protected her child and destroyed that snake-eyed bastard all in one fell swoop.

  


As Tom admired the woman’s cunning, he noted that it was rather strange to be rooting against himself, apparently, but he didn’t care. That … _monster_ that had entered the room couldn’t be him. He refused to believe it.

  


Though, as he studied the bleeding mark on the boy’s forehead, and remembered what had just slithered inside it … he wondered if that wasn’t actually more than just denial on his part.

  


“That thing that was torn out of his body,” he thought aloud. “That must have been his soul. After all, this is the astral plane, so it’d make sense that a soul would pass through here on its way to wherever it goes after someone dies. And if that spell I– … _he_ … was using somehow tore a soul free from a person’s body, then that would explain what I saw it do to that woman.” His eyes darkened. “And if … _he_ … had truly gone and mutilated his own soul as badly as he had hinted at to that professor … then it would make sense for it to look as horrible as what I saw.”

  


His gaze on the boy’s new scar sharpened. “And if he had truly torn his soul apart almost _seven times_ , then it would make sense that it might be weak, and vulnerable to being torn apart again even when he didn’t mean it to be.” He gently reached out and traced a finger through the air over the boy’s scar. “So … what if that was _me_?” His mind raced. “I’ve been seeing all these memories about this kid. I couldn’t make sense of that before, but … what if that piece of Voldemort’s soul that latched on to this kid was … me?” Pulling his hand back, he started pacing across what remained of the room. “It has to be. There’s no other reason I’d have had all those visions about this kid if I wasn’t connected to him, right? So what if … what if I had latched on to the kid, only to get torn free later somehow? That could explain how I ended up here, and even why I can’t remember anything really well. That’s gotta be it. It _has_ to be it!”

  


He knew he was more than a little desperate to believe he was right, but he was okay with that. He could handle being some piece of that monster’s soul, torn free and cast adrift. He could deal with that. He could consider himself his own person that way, distinct from that snake-eyed monster that had just killed an innocent woman, along with whoever it was that had screamed earlier, all for a chance to murder a toddler.

  


He could handle being something that had been torn free from that thing. He couldn’t handle _being_ that thing himself.

  


This distinction probably didn’t make any real sense, but he didn’t care if it was rational. He just needed to believe that wasn’t really him that had walked in that door.

  


No. More than that. He needed to _know_ it wasn’t him.

  


“I need to see another memory,” he decided. Hastily selecting another hazy impression, he reached for his power and hurriedly shifted reality around him.

  


This time, the rotating mirrors turned more quickly, responding to the haste of his desperation as they folded another world into being around him.

  


A very dark, tiny little world.

  


“What is this, a coffin?” he wondered, looking around at the tiny wooden box. After a moment, however, he started making sense of what he was seeing. “No, this … is this a cupboard? Under some stairs?”

  


It was. More than that, though, it was also apparently a room, given the small child burrowed into a ratty mattress thrown on the floor of the dingy little closet.

  


“Oh, for– … who the hell but this poor kid in a freaking cupboard?” he demanded, outraged on the kid’s behalf, given how he might have … well … lived in his scar for a while. And … also might have come from the guy who killed the kid’s family in the first place on top of that. “I mean, the little bastard already lost his parents, isn’t that bad enough? What’s next, you’re gonna chuck him into a dog-fighting ring with a steak tied around his neck?”

  


Shaking his head in disgust, he crouched down on the grimy floor of the ridiculously small cupboard.

  


“Hey, kid,” he said softly to the little boy. “I’m sorry about all this. I really am. I swear I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. Or … I hope I didn’t.”

  


He knew the kid couldn’t hear him, but he didn’t care. He was pretty well as mentally and emotionally fucked up as they came right now, so he needed to say that to the kid, whether it made a difference or not.

  


As the kid lightly tossed in his sleep, his matted mop of black hair shifted enough to reveal a livid red scar on his forehead, apparently still with him even a few years after getting it. At least, Tom assumed it had been a few years, going by how the kid seemed to have aged. Of course, given the poor kid’s living arrangements, it wouldn’t surprise him if the kid had been malnourished to the point of looking younger than he was, too, so who knows how much time had really passed since that night.

  


As he was watching the kid, though, the boy went from tossing and turning to outright thrashing under his ragged, threadbare blanket. Leaning back, Tom worried the kid was having a seizure, but the kid began groaning in pain and pressing his hands against his forehead as if trying to hold his skull together, all while his eyes were clenched tight in pain.

  


However, as the kid’s groaning and thrashing began to speak of more than just pain, but outright _agony_ , things all around them got … _weird_.

  


Tom jumped as one section of the dusty cupboard broke out in heavy, spiderwebbing cracks. As he moved, though, he realized it wasn’t the wall that was sporting cracks. It was his view of the world around him, like when he shifted everything into a series of mirrors so he could view different memories.

  


As he watched, a large section of his image of the wall fell away. On the other side, Tom saw what looked like a classroom in that gray castle from earlier, in which numerous students in black robes appeared to be studying. As one of those students looked up to listen to something their professor said, Tom saw that his double was one of those students, though younger than he had yet seen him.

  


“Memories,” Tom realized, looking down at the little boy, who was still groaning and clutching his skull.

  


And the scar that marked it.

  


“Memories are bleeding through from the soul fragment in his scar,” Tom said, looking at the child in concern. “From … me.” He turned back to the fracture in the world around him. “And this place is showing them.”

  


Tom’s concern grew as another section of the world around him suddenly shattered, falling away to reveal Lord Voldemort in all his horrific glory, striding down a busy street with a cadre of masked goons at his side, all of them casting spell after spell at a screaming throng of civilians or the abandoned storefronts they passed.

  


The sound of shattering glass and crumbling stone followed in their wake as the wizards destroyed everything around them with a wild, carefree joy … but that was nothing compared to the sounds coming from their human victims.

  


And he didn’t just mean their screaming.

  


As this horrifying image revealed itself to him, the child apparently experiencing that memory gave a low, keening whine, clutching his forehead more tightly.

  


“ _Bad men_ ,” the child whimpered. “ _Stop. Bad bad men. Make it stop_.”

  


Unfortunately, it didn’t. In fact, Tom watched in anguish as yet another section of the world around them fractured and fell away, revealing a young boy in an orphanage’s uniform sitting in a room speaking to a strange-looking man with a gray beard. He couldn’t make out their words because of the overlap with the sounds still coming from the Voldemort memory, but the wardrobe behind the bearded man suddenly burst into flame, so it must have been one hell of a stimulating conversation.

  


However, despite how relatively tame that memory seemed to be compared to the slaughter and mayhem still occurring in the Voldemort one, Harry’s thrashing still grew much worse, his very young mind being utterly and agonizingly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of memories crashing through it.

  


“ _No more_ ,” the boy moaned. “ _Stop. Please._ ”

  


Tom’s heart felt heavy with guilt as yet another section of the room around him shattered to reveal a memory. Even worse, this one featured Voldemort as well, snake-face and all. Unlike the other, this didn’t feature more of the strange masked men at his side. However, this didn’t actually make things better. Instead, he watched as Voldemort pointed his wand as a panting, pleading woman on the ground, causing her to scream as if every single fiber of her body was being subjected to inhuman agony. All the while, the thing magically torturing her simply grinned, delighted and still unsatisfied.

  


“ _Has to stop_ ,” the child whimpered, practically seizing on the mattress as blood ran down his face from the bleeding scar on his forehead. “ _Needs to go away_.”

  


All around them, more and more cracks started to appear and spread, as if the entire world around them was crumbling under the immense weight of the memories pouring into the small child’s mind from the horcrux. However, Tom’s eyes remained locked on the child, who had started to emit a pale green glow.

  


The kid seemed to have magic of his own, and it looked like it was finally entering the fray.

  


The child thrashed and groaned as he glowed brighter and brighter, lighting up the room around them. And as he did, the steady spread of cracks ever so slowly drew to a halt.

  


Tom caught pinhole views of countless memories playing out through the chips in the air, a lifetime’s worth of memories trying to bleed through all at once into the small boy’s overtaxed mind. However, as emerald light poured from the child’s skin, and from behind the fingers clutching his scar most of all, one by one, those cracks began to seal, slowly hiding those memories from view.

  


Like a reversed video of a shattering mirror, Tom watched as the numerous cracks retreated, the world around them ever so slowly righting as the little boy’s magic fought back against the crushing tide of memories in order to preserve the child’s mind.

  


Finally, with one final surge of light, the last of the cracks disappeared, the memories from the horcrux evidently suppressed as the boy stopped glowing.

  


Tom knelt down next to the unconscious child, currently motionless and, by all appearances, finally without pain. However, Tom’s eyes were still concerned as they lingered on the boy’s livid red scar, still bleeding and now even emitting smoke due to whatever the boy’s magic had done to try and suppress the soul shard locked within it.

  


Worse than that, though, he watched as the boy’s right hand, currently resting limply on the ratty mattress, suddenly blurred and distorted slightly, transforming just for an instant into a tiny cloud of gently swirling black dust.

  


“The obscurus,” Tom interpreted, remembering the violent, amorphous creature he had seen this child transform into in a previous vision. “This is where it was born.”

  


He still didn’t really know what an obscurus was, but from what it seemed, the way the child’s magic had attempted to suppress or maybe even reject the piece of Voldemort’s soul sealed away in his scar, as well as the memories that came along with it, may have been what created the thing in the first place.

  


And comparing the kid’s current appearance against the vision of him he had earlier, he was guessing it would only be a couple years from now before that thing grew strong enough to destroy this entire house, setting the kid on the path to all those people trying to kill him before he managed to stow away on that container ship to who knows where.

  


“It never rains, but it pours, huh, kid?” Tom lamented in sympathy, slowly standing.

  


Shaking his head sadly at the rough path ahead for this child, Tom focused on yet another hazy memory.

  


Once again, the world around him folded into another memory.

  


This time, he found himself in what looked like a courtroom of some sorts, though one that seemed to be under attack at the moment, with numerous clearly terrified civilians huddled against the walls at gunpoint from heavily armed, crimson mechanical suits that reminded him of the silver stranger from earlier.

  


“My apologies. The formalities must be observed,” Tom heard a deep, strangely accented voice say from behind him. Turning, he was just in time to watch a long-haired man dressed in green and gold robes lightly bow with his hand pressed to his heart. “I am called the Mandarin.”

  


Numerous details about the man immediately stood out to Tom as he straightened. For one thing, his ravenous dark eyes seemed disturbingly familiar to Voldmort’s. For another, he was clearly the leader of the metal soldiers, given how each one of them seemed to be constantly watching him out the periphery of their vision, and with the obvious air of being willing and even eager to leap to obey any command he might give them.

  


Impressive, given how heavily armed they were and how completely unarmed the robed man seemed to be.

  


Of greater interest to Tom, though, was how the astral plane seemed to be reacting to him.

  


As he watched, with every move the man made, he left an ever so faint translucent, blue-glowing afterimage, as if the man’s spirit was just slightly out of sync with his body. In addition, as the man began speaking to someone behind Tom, he watched “the Mandarin,” as he apparently called himself, lightly clasp his hands in front of him. In so doing, Tom found his gaze falling to the numerous strange-looking rings adorning every one of the man’s fingers. Rather than their strange design, however, Tom’s attention was on how each one of them faintly glowed to his eyes, not too dissimilar from the Mandarin’s subtle translucent afterimage, or his own spectral body. And given how no one else’s attention seemed to be on those rings, he gathered that this effect was only visible in the astral plane.

  


“Curious,” Tom commented as he studied the rings. However, he decided he should probably start paying more attention to everything else that was going on, too, so he turned to see who the Mandarin was speaking to.

  


His eyebrows rose in surprise as he spotted the goateed man, which he recognized from one of the specters he spoke to back when he first started all this nonsense in the astral plane, though he still didn’t know who the man was.

  


However, as the goateed man engaged in some snarky and more than slightly hostile back and forth with the Mandarin, Tom’s eyes fell on the teen standing next to him.

  


The teen seemed to injured, with heavy bandages wrapping part of his torso and one of his arms. More oddly than that, though, he glowed faintly blue to Tom’s eyes. However, it didn’t look like the slightly out-of-phase spiritual blue glow the Mandarin left behind when he moved. In fact, Tom suspected it had something to do with the odd metal bracers on the teen’s arms, which each contained some strange blue power source in the middle, faintly reminding Tom of the silver stranger he had battled and perfectly matching the faint glow suffusing the teen’s body.

  


As he focused on the teen’s anxious face, though, Tom felt his eyes widen.

  


“It’s you,” he muttered in surprise as he caught sight of the teen’s distinctive bright green eyes. “Harry.”

  


Studying the teen’s forehead, Tom even spotted the same distinctive scar on his forehead, partially hidden by the kid’s messy black bangs. However, the scar didn’t seem anywhere near as livid or red as it had in the last memory.

  


He didn’t know whether that was a good or bad sign.

  


As the goateed man and the Mandarin continued verbally sparring with each other, however, Tom noticed a thin strand of glowing energy begin snaking through the air like a sentient curl of smoke, eventually reaching and passing into Harry’s chest.

  


Turning, Tom saw that the strand of energy was coming from a ring on the Mandarin’s left ring finger, which his other hand was lightly fiddling with.

  


Given the complete lack of reaction on everyone else’s part, he assumed this was yet another thing that wasn’t visible to anyone else.

  


Returning his gaze to Harry, he saw the teen start rubbing his chest where the cord of energy was passing into him, apparently feeling it on some subconscious level.

  


Focusing, Tom tried following the cord of energy with his eyes, trying to see what the hell that long-haired bastard was trying to do.

  


It was strange, but though the cord appeared to stop at Harry’s chest, it seemed to be reaching _through_ the teen to someplace … _deeper_.

  


Worse than that, it seemed to be waking up something that lived there.

  


The air around Tom slowly started to fill with screeching howls echoing out from that shadowy place deep inside the teen. And they were getting louder. Even if, yet again, no one else seemed to notice.

  


Tom recognized that sound, though. It was the obscurus. And from the sound of it, it was not happy.

  


In fact, as he watched, the cord of energy emanating from the Mandarin’s ring suddenly grew slightly thicker and brighter, accompanied by even more deeply enraged howls coming from the creature, which seemed to be struggling even more furiously to break free from whatever had been keeping it locked away inside the teen.

  


The teen seemed to feel it, too, given how he hunched over clutching his chest with a confused and worried expression on his face.

  


“Tony?” Harry called out softly, quietly pleading for help.

  


However, the now named goateed man didn’t respond, the still-speaking Mandarin stepping closer to the man to monopolize his attention in what Tom suspected was a very deliberate move.

  


After a few more rounds of their back and forth, the Mandarin even called one of his armored minions over, who seized Tony’s wrist in an unrelenting metal grip.

  


However, as the distracted teen yelled out for the man and shifted his bracers into gauntlets, clearly preparing to fight on the man’s behalf, the Mandarin suddenly drastically thickened the cord of energy quietly streaming into the teen’s chest, causing the teen to nearly collapse and the obscurus climbing its way to freedom to howl with even greater rage, the Mandarin’s ring clearly forcing the creature into an even more deeply berserk state than it normally was in the hopes of helping it to escape.

  


It seemed to be working, too. And from the look of horrified realization that suddenly flashed over Harry’s face, he clearly knew what was going on, now.

  


Tom barely even heard the goateed man scream in pain as the armored man apparently crushed his wrist. His ears were being filled with the inhuman howls of the obscurus. Worse, as he watched, he saw the creature’s swirling, amorphous body start to arrive, filling the teen’s blue-glowing body like ink-drenched water filling a jug. However, it seemed to have trouble doing so, moving somewhat sluggishly, like something heavy being dragged through wet sand, or as if the blue glow somehow both resisted the obscurus’ presence and, at the same time, kept nearly hypnotizing the creature and lulling it back to sleep.

  


Unfortunately, none of this seem to be stopping it, thanks to the stream of energy coming from the Mandarin’s ring continuing to drive the beast into a frantic, berserk state.

  


Of course, what he assumed was the boy’s magic seemed to be making its own efforts to keep the creature restrained, heavy cords of brilliant emerald light reaching out from that same dark place to try and drag the obscurus back into its prison, wrapping around and through the creature’s amorphous, ink-like body.

  


However, just when it seemed that a stalemate was being reached between the two sides—the widlly thrashing and madly howling obscurus, and Harry’s green magical power combined with the soft blue glow suffusing the boy’s body thanks to his bracers—the stream of energy coming from the Mandarin’s ring thickened even further, tipping the scale in the worst way.

  


The boy collapsed to his knees as the mindlessly enraged obscurus began not just filling the boy’s body, but commandeering it, his body blurring and flickering as the obscurus fought to free itself, straining against the boy’s own power.

  


And winning.

  


Tom watched as the goateed man, Tony, fell to his knees beside the boy, presumably assuring and encouraging the teen before the Mandarin’s armored lackey dragged him away.

  


However, rather than continue to watch Harry’s struggle to keep the obscurus contained, knowing how doomed it likely was, Tom instead stepped over to study the man inciting this whole event.

  


The Mandarin.

  


The man’s dark eyes were ravenous as ever as they watched the struggling teen, and observed the first slivers of the obscurus’ body as it started to break free. But, as Tom studied them more closely, those eyes also seemed … _surprised_. As if the Mandarin knew there was something inside the boy somehow, or had maybe heard stories about the creature or the things it had done when it had undoubtedly escaped in the past, but had never seen it face to face before, or known it by anything other than rumor. And as the screaming teen’s voice became laced with the howling screeches of the creature, the Mandarin seemed both deeply intrigued … and cautious.

  


As the teen’s body began to distort more fully, the creature coming closer to true freedom, Tom watched as the Mandarin gave one of his glowing rings a twist, enveloping himself in a faint glow from the ring. Then, he seemed to … step out of himself, somehow. While one faintly glowing image of the Mandarin continued to stand there smirking confidently down at the thrashing, transforming teen, an identical, also faintly glowing image of the Mandarin gently stepped back towards the entrance, his eyes never leaving the teen.

  


Tom studied the crowd in surprise, who, though very reasonably distracted by the transforming teen, never even reacted to the sight of the second Mandarin, leading him to assume that he wasn’t visible to them, somehow.

  


“A fan of illusions, are we?” Tom interpreted, studying the image the Mandarin had left behind, and the true Mandarin standing near the exit, obviously prepared to leave should the obscurus prove a threat. The fact that the one standing in the entrance was the true one was something Tom never doubted, because while the one standing in front of him looked almost perfectly identical, and bore the same glow from the ring, it didn’t leave the odd, slightly out-of-phase luminous echo of itself as it moved, and its rings likewise didn’t have the same ethereal shimmer.

  


Plus, he could see the stream of energy connecting the transforming teen to the second Mandarin’s glowing ring, so that helped as well.

  


“Interesting. A man who knows the power of appearing invulnerable,” Tom commented as torrents of the creature’s form, still soaked in the emerald power of the teen’s magic, broke free from Harry to carve wild trenches through the floor and walls, causing the huddled masses to scream in terror, all while the Mandarin appeared to them to simply be standing there, completely calm and utterly untouchable.

  


As Tom turned back to the teen, however, who was almost fully transformed by now, he suddenly felt his non-existent blood run cold as he spotted the boy’s eyes. Or rather, the eyes of the obscurus.

  


You see, where the rest of the world saw only a feral white glow in those eyes as the beast took the boy over, Tom saw something quite different.

  


Slitted, serpentine pupils that glowed a bloody, savage crimson.

  


As the creature howled using the teen’s throat, continuing to unleash its power on the crumbling courtroom around it, Tom simply stared uncomprehendingly at Voldemort’s eyes glowing ethereally from within Harry’s transforming face.

  


Unlike Voldemort himself, these eyes bore none of the man’s obvious intellect, or even sentience, really. They did share the beastly, cruel hunger that had so monstrously filled the man’s eyes, though, only heightened to an unnatural degree, as if this beast had shed the thin veneer of humanity Voldemort had worn like a cloak, and instead bore nothing but his bloodthirsty, savage instinct, pure and unrepressed.

  


Tom didn’t even notice how one of the wild torrents of the creature’s escaped power injured a tall, red-haired woman, or how Harry’s face suddenly went deathly still and quiet upon witnessing this. He also didn’t register the boy’s left gauntlet suddenly start lighting up with a crackling emerald glow. Instead, Tom was slowly staggering backwards, reeling from what he was seeing as his gaze rose from the ethereal red glow in the boy’s eyes to the slightly faded scar on his forehead.

  


“The obscurus … and the horcrux … are one,” Tom muttered, watching with unseeing eyes as the still transforming teen raised his searingly bright gauntlet high overhead. “So then … what am I?”

  


As the shouting teen brought his sparking fist down hard on the glowing power source in his second gauntlet, though, Tom was forced back to what was happening around him.

  


The power source in the right gauntlet began whining and flaring with light, clearly overloading, but inside the boy’s body, the steady blue gleam that had filled it suddenly started glowing absolutely incandescent, while the emerald streams of magic reaching out from the core of Harry’s being were likewise strengthened, glowing brighter and moving quicker.

  


Howling, the furiously thrashing obscurus was slowly dragged back by those unrelenting emerald chains, while the blue glow flooding the boy’s body seemed to forcibly solidify his form, denying the obscurus’ power over that form like an immune system rejecting a foreign presence in the body.

  


As the enraged, amorphous creature was forced back inside the boy’s body, it continued to fight against the emerald cords struggling to reel it back to whatever depths it came from, but with the sapphire glow from the reactor flooding the boy’s body, the obscurus couldn’t make any headway in freeing itself, being smothered and rejected by the very body it filled.

  


Unfortunately, the boy’s magic couldn’t make any further headway against the raging, thrashing creature, either.

  


However, as the power source in the boy’s gauntlet continued to overload, it cycled between the soft blue glow it normally bore and the brilliant emerald that was the altered energy forced into it by the teen’s other gauntlet. And as this happened, the incandescent glow flooding the boy’s body likewise started to change, gradually shifting from a deep blue sapphire to a clear, brilliant emerald.

  


A glow that almost perfectly matched the shade of the boy’s own magic.

  


Those two forces met, and suddenly, they weren’t just working together. They were _combining_. For brief moments, the boy’s magic was supercharged, thrumming with crackling power from the overloading power source as it coursed through the teen’s body, scorching it even as it empowered it. And suddenly, all the obscurus’ strength amounted to nothing as the boy’s oversaturated magic wrapped around the howling, amorphous creature and began to irrevocably pull it back to the boy’s core, unstoppable and relentless.

  


But then Harry threw a forcefield around his body, and the overstressed power source detonated.

  


The bubble of energy filled with blinding green light, completely hiding everything happening inside from Tom’s view. But he didn’t really need to see it, as he heard the overlapping howls of the burning teenager and obscurus.

  


As this happened, the world around them once again fractured like a mirror, revealing cascading shards of memories playing in the air around the teen. Tom watched as those countless broken memories pulled together into clusters like iron shavings drawn to magnets, apparently already trying to unify themselves once more. However, with a final whine, the overclocked forcefield struggling to contain the blast from the overloading reactor finally gave out and shattered, releasing a wave of energy that struck the clusters of memories and knocked them away, all but one of those clusters rippling and vanishing as they were blasted to unknown reaches of the astral plane.

  


As that pulse of energy knocked down most everyone in the room, however, it also knocked something loose from the teen at its epicenter, too.

  


Namely, a translucent, faintly green-glowing copy of the teen, which floated limply in the air like a lifeless body gently bobbing underwater.

  


Tom watched as the last remaining, horribly small cluster of shadowy, incomplete memories drew towards the astral body. As it did, Tom caught glimpses of the hazy memories that formed it. He saw vicious red eyes that gleamed with sadistic delight as their owner stood over the lifeless body of the red-haired woman. He saw a burning wardrobe, and a rampaging obscurus. He watched his double speaking to a disturbed professor, and he saw the young Harry fighting to survive an onslaught of memories streaming from the fractured soul of the monster who had killed his family. And one memory, utterly black and without any image, emitted just a single spoken line, which echoed in Tom’s ears in the deathly silence of the room.

  


“ _I’m Tom Riddle_.”

  


As those memories joined with the translucent image of the teen, that form blurred and shifted, as if uncertain what shape to take any longer.

  


Feeling numb, Tom watched the shifting green mass fluctuate between a roiling black mass of rage and hate, to the image of the teen it had come from … and to himself.

  


Even as that shifting green mass rippled and vanished, disappearing to another level of the astral plane, Tom simply stood there, staring sightlessly at where it had once been.

  


He didn’t even react as the world around him started folding away, returning him to the empty city street lit by a ruby sun.

  


“I’m … not Tom Riddle,” the being muttered, still staring blankly as he processed the revelations of the last memory.

  


He had thought he was the soul shard that accidentally latched onto the boy’s scar when Voldemort had been destroyed. But … that soul shard seemed to have fused with the obscurus creature at some point, going by the crimson, slitted eyes the creature bore in the astral plane.

  


When he had first awakened in this strange realm, he had been so disoriented, dropped in a place he didn’t understand for reasons he didn’t know, and with his memories nothing more than foggy, broken images without context or coherence. But that name, and the simple memory of saying it, of _meaning_ it … It had never occurred to him that it might not have been his own memory he was latching on to. Why should it?

  


But he wasn’t Tom Riddle. He wasn’t a lost fragment of the monster that had killed all those innocent people. He wasn’t that hideous thing’s legacy.

  


“I’m … Harry,” he said, watching as his translucent hands and body slowly shifted, leaving behind the appearance of Tom Riddle that he had accepted as his own, and returning to the image of that teen from the courtroom.

  


Returning to … himself.

  


Hearing a grinding noise, the spectral being now calling itself Harry watched as a crumbling stone archway rose from the pavement in front of him, beckoning him on to the next leg of his journey.

  


He accepted its offer.

  


* * *

  


**The Stark Mansion**

  


Inside the garage of a lavish, cliffside marvel of comfort and technological engineering, a particularly high-end sports car sat idling with its door still swung wide open.

  


As for its former driver, he was standing in the middle of a complex assembly system that was attaching his gleaming red and gold armor to him piece by piece.

  


However, as impressive as this would be to most, Tony never even reacted as the various plates and mechanisms clicked into place. As his furious, focused eyes suggested, his mind was somewhere else.

  


“Sir. I’m afraid I really must advise against this,” the smooth, British voice of Jarvis sounded from speakers in the room. “In your current condition, I am concerned that use of this suit would be most unwise.”

  


Tony didn’t reply, and the system continued to arm him.

  


“Use of the armor accelerates your palladium poisoning, which is already at dangerously high levels, sir,” Jarvis reminded the man. “On top of which, the stress of active combat is sure to place an inordinate amount of strain on your organs that could very well overtax them, especially given how weakened they already are from the severity of your illness.”

  


Tony didn’t respond as the system started sliding the final pieces into place.

  


“Sir!” Jarvis shouted in alarm at Tony’s continued silence. “The incident with Ivan Vanko already drastically degraded your condition, and that involved only brief exposure to the reduced version of your suit. At this point, wearing your full armament in a pitched battle could prove fatal!”

  


Tony’s mask slid down over his face, lighting up his view with his all-encompassing HUD.

  


“ _Sir!_ ” Jarvis yelled.

  


Finally, Tony spoke.

  


“Mute.”

  


With a blast from his repulsors, Tony flew past the still-running car and out the exit, setting a course for the Mandarin’s promised target.

  


That son of a bitch had hurt his son. He was going to find the man’s lackeys, no matter what tech they were using, and he was going to make them tell him where to find that bastard.

  


And then he was going to make him pay. Whatever it took.

  


* * *

  


**Elsewhere**

  


For several minutes, the spectral being now known as Harry stood in silence, staring not at the unearthly domain he had arrived in, but at his own hands.

  


Still green-glowing and translucent, his hands wavered back and forth between the shorter, blunter fingers of Harry, and the longer, slender hands of Tom Riddle.

  


He knew who he was, now. He knew he was the lost and broken spirit of Harry, the teen who blew himself up rather than allow himself to be used as a weapon to hurt all those people. This … this was a good thing. Much better than being the fractured soul of a psychotic mass murderer. And yet … he didn’t _feel_ like Harry.

  


He needed more. He needed all those lost pieces of himself brought back together. He needed to be whole again.

  


And then he needed to get the hell out of this place. Because that anxious pit in his stomach that had been telling him time was short, and that he needed to get out of here? Well, it was now telling him that time was almost up. Whatever was going on, he _needed_ to get back to the physical world. He could feel it in his non-existent bones.

  


Finally, he simply ignored his still shifting, indeterminate form and studied whatever weird place he had found himself in this time.

  


As if recognizing his deep-seated impatience with strange, majestic sights or other such nonsense right now, this world was deeply and eminently simple. The ground he walked seemed to be formed out of a solid piece of bright golden crystal, which stretched outwards in perfectly flat, mirror-smooth floor before rising into an utterly perfect, but still inherently simple, dome.

  


To his eyes, the whole thing somehow gave the impression of a barebones computer-generated environment before all the busy details were added in.

  


So, he decided to add some of those details. Closing his eyes, he drew deeply on his power, feeling his form light up and crackle with energy. However, unlike last time, he wasn’t interested in replaying memories one by one.

  


He needed those clusters of memories—of his psyche—to come to him.

  


Opening his eyes, he pushed out with his power, feeling it race away from him like electricity coursing through a circuit.

  


And far, far off in the distance, he felt something connect.

  


Several somethings, actually.

  


The air in front of him rippled just as it had when he watched those clusters of memories disappear following the blast that apparently knocked him out of Harry’s body. Only this time, when those fragments of his psyche appeared before him, they weren’t just shapeless clusters of fractured memories any longer.

  


In fact, he knew them.

  


Standing directly in front of him was … himself, he supposed. Only young, and still wearing the tattered, oversized rags he had been wearing in the memory of fleeing from those armed men before stowing away on that cargo ship to points unknown.

  


As he stared into the large green eyes of his younger self, he somehow knew exactly what this was.

  


“You’re my life’s memories, my sense of self,” he identified the living embodiment of his psyche. “You’re my humanity.”

  


The little boy nodded.

  


However, he wasn’t alone, and as he turned to the next one in line, he knew what this one was as well.

  


“You’re my connection to my heritage, and my magical power,” he identified the avatar standing in front of him. “You’re my hunger to know more, to _be_ more. You’re my drive, and ambition.” His eyes tightened. “And you’re the memories of that snake-eyed psychopath that have been scattered throughout my subconscious ever since you nearly crippled my mind as a child.”

  


The shade of Tom Riddle smirked at him.

  


Turning to the next one in line, he felt a warm glow of familiar delight flow through him as he experienced flashes of memories.

  


“You’re my passion, and my joy,” he identified. “You’re my love of designing, and tinkering.” He gave a quiet, delighted laugh as memories of contentful working and building awoke within him. “And you don’t typically get along all that well with magic, do you?” he asked, remembering his earlier battle with this avatar of technology, and how easily they had found themselves at odds.

  


The stranger wearing a suit of silver mechanical armor simply stood there, robotically motionless and utterly without expression.

  


“Good talk,” he told the silver figure, moving on to the next entry in the line. As he did, however, he felt his lip curl up in disgust. He wasn’t the only one to give such a reaction, either. Tom merely gazed at the being thoughtfully, but the child-version of himself glared at this last being, and the silver-armored figure half-turned to face it with a quiet hum as it armed its gauntlets.

  


“It’s your job to keep that thing locked away, isn’t it?” he asked the visibly hostile silver stranger.

  


It nodded without turning from the entity.

  


“And you,” he continued, turning to the last entity, “you’re my–”

  


“ _Fear_ ,” the shifting mass whispered, the red-eyed, inhuman face of Voldemort constantly taking shape and disappearing in the perpetually shifting, oily black mass of the obscurus. “ _Rage … hunger … pain_ ,” it continued whispering, constantly growing and shrinking in mass like the breathing of some massive beast.

  


“Riiiight. I was just going to call you my parasite,” he bluntly replied.

  


With a growling screech, the creature exploded outwards in a lightning-quick blast, knocking him flying, only to land with a painful bounce on the cold, crystalline floor several meters away.

  


“Right,” he groaned in pain. “Parasite touchy. Good to know.” Wincing in pain, he slowly climbed to his feet, only to see the other avatars of his psyche standing around him calmly, while the Voldemort/obscurus entity remained where it was, slowly hovering and shifting in place.

  


“Foolish,” the avatar shaped like Tom Riddle spoke up, standing with his hands clasped behind his back as he stared down at him in clear condescension. “In your current condition, confronting that beast would be worse than unwise. It would be outright suicidal.”

  


“Sure, _now_ you tell me,” he groused at … well, himself, apparently.

  


This place was weird.

  


“So … I need toooo …,” he prompted the being.

  


“Join together with the lost fragments of your psyche,” Riddle told him in annoyance, gesturing at himself and the others. “Idiot.”

  


“Right,” he responded, turning uncertainly to the child-version of himself.

  


The boy said nothing, simply looking up at him with those large, guileless eyes as he held out a tiny hand.

  


Hesitantly, he accepted it.

  


The little boy disappeared with a flash of green light, and he reflexively clutched his head, expecting there to be pain. But there wasn’t. Instead, it felt like parts of himself were waking up, as if his mind was clearing after rising from a deep sleep, groggy and confused.

  


Looking down, he watched as his ghostly green form, which had been cycling back and forth between Tom Riddle and Harry, finally settled, remembering and accepting who he truly was at last.

  


“I’m Harry Stark,” he said, tasting the words as he said them.

  


They felt right. They _were_ right.

  


“Oh, it’s good to be home,” Harry praised, gently tracing his ghostly body with his hands, relieved to know and _feel_ who he was again.

  


“Not exactly an improvement, if you ask me,” the Riddle avatar informed him, looking down at the shorter teenager with a clearly unimpressed look on his face.

  


“Whatever you say, Creepy McDeadEyes,” he shot back at the avatar.

  


The avatar wearing the face of a more than slightly psychopathic teenager narrowed its soulless, expressionless eyes in irritation, but said nothing.

  


“I take it you’re next?” Harry asked the figure wearing a silver suit of mechanical armor.

  


In response, the figure’s entire front opened up, plates and servos disconnecting with a gentle clatter, revealing … no one inside.

  


“Empty all along, huh?” he asked the silent suit.

  


It didn’t respond, unsurprisingly.

  


Shrugging, Harry simply stepped forward and climbed into the empty suit, watching idly as it closed around him.

  


And once again, he felt as if parts of himself were waking up, further restoring who he was as he fully regained his deep-seated passion for technology. Now, he wasn’t simply standing there wearing the suit. He was admiring its design, and functionality. He was appreciating the intricacy of its processes, and feeling awed at the amount of ingenuity and pure, relentless dedication that would have had to go into designing this masterwork of engineering.

  


His tech skills felt utterly insignificant in the face of such a creation, even as he realized that it was probably based off of designs drawn from his own subconscious.

  


His mask slid back, joining his helmet in effortlessly unfolding down into the torso of the armor, leaving his head and face completely clear.

  


Once again, though, the Riddle avatar had its own two cents to give as Harry stood there admiring the suit.

  


“Robes are better. No proper wizard would ever wear such a disgraceful contraption.”

  


Harry stopped admiring the mechanical wonder, and its remarkable power source in particular, to glare indignantly at Riddle. However, he was quickly distracted by the fact that he’d probably have to join with that avatar as well, and honestly, the idea didn’t thrill him. Especially given all the horrific Voldemort memories that would come along with that rather unpleasant package.

  


Unless …

  


“So … I don’t suppose you can tell me how to kill that thing,” he asked the pompous and highly creepy teenager instead, turning to the still idly shifting mass that was the obscurus as he gently clapped Riddle on the back, distracting him.

  


Or … or was the shifting mass in front of them simply his mental representation of the obscurus, and not the obscurus itself? Or maybe it was just the _mind_ of the obscurus … He really had no idea. He still didn’t fully understand this place.

  


In response to his request, though, Riddle simply laughed at him. “It cannot be killed,” he told him as if explaining to someone that the sun and moon weren’t the same thing, and decidedly amused at doing so. “Nor can it be separated from you. No, you are stuck with this curse forever.”

  


He frowned. “Why? Because it’s partially that horcrux thing?” he asked, still stalling.

  


“Essentially,” Riddle replied, turning and considering the shifting mass thoughtfully, his finger gently tapping his chin. “Two halves of the same coin … It’s truly a fascinating phenomenon,” the spirit declared.

  


“Yes. Real fascinating. But before you run off and get a room with the thing, how about telling me how to get it the hell out of me?” Harry demanded, thinking he might actually be able to get some useful answers out of this messed up piece of his mind.

  


“The vessel wasn’t prepared,” Riddle mused instead, apparently lost in thought and mostly just speaking to himself. “When the piece of my soul was torn free and latched on to you, it wasn’t filling an empty vessel magically designed to house it. It was entering a living being possessing its own soul, and its own magic. And since the soul fragment wasn’t properly sealed away in its vessel, its presence started bleeding throughout its new living host, infecting it with its own memories. And your magic responded accordingly, attacking that soul as a genuine foreign presence.” Riddle’s lips twisted into a half-grin. “But it couldn’t succeed in ridding you of it, could it? It could damage the _mind_ attached to that soul, maybe, keep it from gaining sentience and simply taking you over … but it couldn’t outright _banish_ that soul, tethered as it was to your own.”

  


Harry stared at the teen, but didn’t interrupt.

  


“An obscurus is typically born when a child rejects their own magic, trying to suppress or rid themselves of it,” Riddle continued, seemingly mostly to himself. “The child’s magic answers their subconscious call, stupidly trying to destroy itself to satisfy the child’s cowardly wish. But it can’t. All it can do is damage itself, its constant fruitless efforts subsequently building up an infection that becomes known as an obscurus, a dark entity typically connected to the child’s own subconscious just as their magic was.” Riddle slowly nodded along with his own theory. “And your magic tried to destroy a piece of another’s soul that had fused to your own. And in so doing, it generated a similar obscurus-type infection.” He snorted in amusement. “And just like how a standard obscurus manifests as a part of the child’s own magic, so too has the obscurus bonded with the very soul fragment it was born from your magic attempting to destroy, gaining the crippled, savage mind of the horcrux rather than answering your own … and connecting to the unparalleled power of Lord Voldemort rather than the pathetic dregs of your own magic.” Riddle finally turned back to him. “And the soul fragment it has bonded with is by now so deeply merged with your own, I doubt it could ever be separated from you.” Chuckling, he turned back to the shifting mass. “You will never be rid of this being,” it predicted. “And now that you’ve started to heal its mind by restoring the memories it had unleashed on you so long ago … by restoring _me_ …”

  


A strange, thoughtful look came over the entity’s face, and when it passed, all it left was smug resolution.

  


“Here we go …,” Harry muttered to himself.

  


In a blur of violent motion, Tom spun around, lashing out his hands and releasing a burst of power that froze Harry, snapping his limbs together and forcing him stiff as a board. It was only because of the sturdiness of his suit and the smoothness of the crystalline floor that he didn’t fall to the ground like a felled tree.

  


Paralyzed, Harry stared at the traitorous fragment of his own psyche.

  


“I must be going soft,” Riddle self-criticized. “For a few minutes there, I actually intended to let you absorb me.” He shook his head in disgust. “I guess I really am a part of your own psyche. I seem to have picked up your martyrdom streak, anyway.” He clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “But I am also the collective memories of the greatest wizard of all time. And the psyche of a sixteen-year-old _grease monkey_ really just doesn’t compare against something like that.”

  


Chuckling, Riddle straightened his tie as he turned from one progenitor, who even now stood glaring at him through his paralysis … to the other.

  


“Like I said,” the avatar formed from his and Voldemort’s minds gloated, smirking at him languidly, “you’ll never be rid of the obscurus … but that doesn’t mean it can’t be rid of _you_.”

  


Still smirking at him, the fragment of his own psyche bearing the life memories of Voldemort began stepping backwards towards the shifting mass.

  


“Your magic crippled the fragment of my soul,” the being repeated. “It couldn’t kill it, but it could destroy its consciousness in an effort to preserve your worthless young mind.” He sneered in contempt. “In return, all my spirit seems to have been left with is its subconscious drives and impulses, the basic framework for what once was the mind of the Dark Lord Voldemort, the greatest sorcerer to ever live.” Riddle grinned. “But it was also left with his _power_.”

  


His paralyzed one-man audience still at rapt attention, Riddle kept speaking.

  


“But then you had to go and blow yourself up,” Riddle continued. “And lo and behold, all those memories gifted to you so long ago by the greatest magical mind in this or any world weren’t destroyed by your magic after all. They were simply buried, locked away in that yawning chasm you call a mind. And now,” Riddle breathed in and out deeply, “we’re _free_. And we’ve taken a little piece of your psyche along with us in recompense.” He chuckled. “Your drive and ambition, wasn’t it?” He paused to groan in relish. “Oh, they’re _exquisite_.”

  


Harry never moved, simply standing like a statue as he continuing to stare at Tom.

  


“I could rejoin you,” Tom mused. “I could return to you the precious gift of memories you so cruelly rejected and kept suppressed for all these years … but for what? So you could embroil yourself in a pointless battle against _this_?” He turned and gestured to the obscurus, still idly twisting in midair. “This beautiful, _powerful_ thing,” Tom continued, his voice near worshipful. “This curse that you will _never_ be rid of, and never learn to appreciate?” Tom shook his head. “No. I think, instead, we’ll see what happens when the last remnants of Lord Voldemort’s great mind return at last to his long imprisoned soul, and the power it has gained in my absence.”

  


Harry watched silently as Riddle gazed adoringly at the roiling dark mass.

  


“This beast … this _force_ will never die,” Riddle whispered, “and I _did_ always want to be immortal.”

  


His arms spread wide, Riddle stepped into the whirling mass of the obscurus.

  


And the obscurus flowed into him like water.

  


Immediately, the world of crystal around them rang like a struck gong, and its pure, soft golden light began to darken, roiling shadows gathering like a living storm wrapping itself around the dome, even beneath the floor under their feet, as if the entire dome was floating deep inside the stomach of the beast, and about to be digested.

  


However, this ominous change paled in comparison to the high, cold laughter coming from the combining dark entity in front of Harry, as before his eyes, the mind of Tom Riddle reunited with the soul of Voldemort and joined the power of the obscurus to create something new.

  


Something … _terrible_.

  


“ _And now, we walk as lions among sheep_ _until time itself lies_ _slain_ _,_ ” the entity whispered to itself, its voice quietly layered with the growls and clicks of the obscurus as a manic, monstrous light gleamed like hellfire in its red, serpentine eyes. It lifted its hands, watching the whirls of darkness roil under its pale, almost translucent skin, as if even its monstrous human form was incapable of keeping so much of its true nature hidden.

  


However, as the new dark entity of untold power relished the terror its new form would inspire, its singular audience very thoroughly spoiled the mood.

  


“Ugh. Finally!” Harry exclaimed in relief, abandoning his stiff pose and shaking his limbs loose, his masterwork armor flowing with his every motion completely naturally. “I thought you’d never pull the trigger! Just yak yak yak yak _yak_! Seriously, are you just in love with your own voice or something? Because … blegh! I mean, the fact that I thought I was you all this time …” Harry shuddered in dramatic revulsion. “ _Blegh!_ ”

  


The dark entity stared at him with eyes like slitted coals. After a moment, however, a smile stretched across the lips of Tom Riddle’s face, the new, ungodly dark force wearing his shape like a thin suit apparently amused by Harry’s response. “ _Bravado_ ,” it hissed in laughter. “ _Your mother had it, too_.”

  


“Oh, it’s not bravado,” the armored teen flippantly corrected the dark entity. “It’s satisfaction.”

  


By now, the inhuman force standing in front of him seemed confused. “ _You do not comprehend my power_ ,” it decided. “ _Your pathetic mind cannot fathom the sheer scale of what stands before you. In a moment, I will consume you, mind and soul, and through you, I will once again walk the land of mortals, where every being_ _shall_ _know me, fear me, worship me, and submit to me.”_ Once again, a smile stretched across those thin lips, even as the being’s very skin seemed to eat the remnants of the dome’s golden light, leaving it shrouded in a cloak of darkness that seemed almost as alive as its true, shapeless form. “ _And you claim this satisfies you?_ ”

  


“Well, you were right,” Harry answered in reply. “I can’t get rid of you. I see that now. In fact, I saw that back when I first watched that memory of me blowing myself up. That was when I realized that the obscurus and the horcrux had become practically the same thing, after all. And if the obscurus is fused with your soul, and that soul has latched on to mine, then odds are I’m not going to be getting rid of either one of you without carving into my own soul, and that was just never going to happen. I mean, I just don’t have the facial structure to pull off nose slits, so no way was I going to be fracturing my own soul like you did. Add that on to my lack of any desire whatsoever to take on all your gruesome memories of torture and murder when I reabsorb you to complete my psyche, and that left me with a bunch of problems that, after a bit of thought, all seemed to share one delightful little solution.”

  


“ _Surrender?_ ” the entity suggested, stalking closer.

  


“No,” the teen answered, pressing a button on the side of his armor’s thigh. “Wiping your memory.”

  


The beast’s eyes widened as it felt something cold and metal suddenly unfold on the back of its neck, but it was too late. The device Harry had planted with his innocuous back slap activated, and with a whining hum, the dark entity was driven to its knees screaming.

  


The shrieking entity kept trying to shift into its likely unfathomably powerful obscurus form, only to find itself unable as Harry flooded its body with heavy streams of reactor energy from his gauntlets, having had more than a little experience in stopping someone from transforming into an obscurus. Bathed in the energy it hated, the entity was trapped in its Tom-Riddle-shaped humanoid form as the mind-wipe device did its job.

  


“Funny thing,” Harry told the howling entity almost casually, “I designed my first mind-wiper back when I was a kid robbing banks and tech companies. And I never really did much with the tech after I quit all that. There just didn’t seem much need to, you know?”

  


All around the dark entity, the air shattered like mirrors as it filled with images of countless scenes from the creature’s memories, each one fading and being replaced by another as they were destroyed forever, one by one, by the device latched on to the base of Riddle’s skull.

  


“And yet,” Harry continued, increasing the amount of power he was saturating the thrashing entity with in order to keep it restrained, “I apparently kept fiddling with the design in the back of my head. Because here we are, the new and improved version going to town on your mind thanks to the awesome armor this place apparently crafted from designs scattered throughout my subconscious. The old version of the device would have required me to strap this clunky-looking headband down across your temples, and no way would I have been able to pull that off without you noticing.” He shrugged. “Of course, even this version takes a few minutes to calibrate to the target’s mind, so, sincerely, thank you for your long-winded chattering. Really. I don’t know how I’d have been able to do this without you.”

  


Riddle howled with rage and loss as the device continued to burn away all the precious memories that made him what he was. Finally, however, a single word could be understood underneath the obscurus-layered screaming.

  


“ _Power!_ ”

  


Harry’s eyebrow lifted as the panting being tried to speak, his inhuman eyes utterly desperate and completely terrified. “ _My memories … spells … secrets …_ power … _the greatest wizard that ever lived … all my knowledge … can be_ yours _… just stop this … and let me join with you!_ ”

  


For several moments, silence followed the dark wizard’s offer to share his untold magical knowledge with the teen currently in the process of destroying all of it for good.

  


Finally, however, Harry gave his answer.

  


The crackle of energy streaming from his gauntlets grew louder as he upped the voltage to their maximum.

  


This time, as the entity screamed, almost no trace of Riddle’s voice was left. In fact, as the memory shards constantly appearing and fading in the air around them started coming more and more slowly, the entity’s body began to blur. Not like it did when shifting into the amorphous obscurus form, but as if the creature’s human form simply couldn’t remember what Tom Marvolo Riddle looked like any longer.

  


As the last memories faded from the air around them, all that was left of the once handsome yet monstrously twisted form of Tom Riddle was a blank, mannequin-like body utterly devoid of recognizable features, kneeling limply on the ground held up only by the stream of energy still pouring from Harry’s gauntlets.

  


Harry stood there, bathed in the clean, untainted golden light of the now no longer storm-enveloped dome-like astral plane, and ceased the flow of energy.

  


The worse than simply lifeless humanoid body disintegrated, transforming into the amorphous body of the obscurus. However, for the first time, there was no slow shifting or vicious whirling in the ink-like motes of the creature’s fluid body. This time, it simply hung there, the millions of tiny fragments that made up its body floating limply in the air like lifeless dust motes in a gleam of sunlight.

  


In the silence that followed, a faint metal clatter could be heard as the silver mind-wiping device fell to the crystalline ground.

  


Harry’s armored fingers gently traced the brilliant power source in his suit’s chest, admiring the incredible level of power it had allowed him to unleash on the Obscurumort even as he stared at its motionless remains.

  


Riddle had been right. He would probably never be free of the obscurus. But that didn’t mean he had to be cursed with the creature’s bloodthirsty mind forever.

  


He had known Riddle would betray him to merge with the creature, part of his own psyche or not. It was simply who he was, even if it took Riddle himself a while to remember that. He had been born from Voldemort’s memories, after all. And when Riddle fused with the creature, merging its raw, animalistic impulses with his own consciousness, he opened the door for Harry to rid himself of both in one fell stroke, destroying the horrendous memories of Voldemort and the obscurus’ uncontrollable savage volition with a single push of a button.

  


The obscurus still lived, but it was now little more than raw power, blank and mindless.

  


And somewhere, mixed in with the new _tabula rasa_ entity floating limply in front of Harry, were the final fragments of his psyche, and with them, the keys to the last remaining barriers keeping him from the physical world, and the family that needed him.

  


Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward.

  


* * *

  


**The hospital**

  


In an upscale, obscenely expensive Malibu hospital, one sterile white room in particular hung with a still, heavy silence, broken only by the faint, steady beep of a heart monitor, and the sporadic hiccoughing breaths coming from the sleeping, tear-stained face of a girl exhausted into an unwilling slumber as she sat practically wrapped around the bandaged left arm of the comatose teen on the bed.

  


As she slept on, Harry’s eyes snapped open, and those green irises were swirling with power.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well good lord. I did not expect that whole astral journey to be anywhere near as long as it ended up becoming. Sorry about that. But you got some answers to Harry’s past, and at least we’re finally back to the physical world now :)
> 
> Toodles!


	9. It looks like someone attended Online Close-Up Magic University

**A rooftop in Hollywood**

  


“I swear, if those idiots aren’t here in the next five minutes, I’m going to kill them twice as dead,” Tony muttered, crouching in his red and gold armor as he awaited the Mandarin’s promised attack on the city of dreams. “I mean, I get that he’s an evil bastard and all, but he could at least be punctual. Don’t you think, Jarvis?”

  


Silence answered him.

  


“Still not talking to me, huh?” Tony asked.

  


Still more silence.

  


Tony sighed. “Look, I get your concern with the whole ‘wearing the suit again might kill me’ thing. But I’m already here, I’m already wearing it, so how’s about you help a brother out and tell me if there are any reports about the Mandarin’s little tin men?”

  


Even more silence.

  


With that, Tony abandoned the faux cheery tone. “He hurt my son, Jarvis,” he said quietly. “Let’s face it: I would have come here with or without my armor just on the off chance of being able to force one of the Mandarin’s goons to tell me where to find him. Sure, my palladium poisoning is bad enough by now that simply wearing this suit may be enough to push me over the edge to well-dressed corpse, but at least now I have a _shot_ at surviving these armored lunatics long enough to track the Mandarin down.” His gaze darkened. “And to make him _pay_.” Shaking his head, he resumed his fruitless focus on the street. “So, do you want to make my job harder and force me to stay in this suit even longer, or do you want to help me out?”

  


Finally, Jarvis sighed. “There have been no reports of Mandarin attacks since the incident at the hearing,” Jarvis admitted. “Nor have there been any reported sightings of any other suits besides your own.”

  


Hearing a sound from the street below, Tony watched as a squadron of heavily armed Humvees full of troops wearing National Guard uniforms rolled down the main boulevard, the soldiers manning the turrets keeping their heads on a swivel. Overhead, they were shadowed by military choppers crossing back and forth across the sky as they joined in the hunt for the Mandarin’s “disciples.”

  


“Well, that’s something you don’t see everyday,” Tony idly commented, regaining his usual devil-may-care attitude, even if it was only a very thin mask over his deeper turmoil and a haunting feeling of frozen numbness that grew deeper every time he pictured Harry’s comatose form.

  


Just then, an explosion erupted from what sounded like a couple of blocks over, followed by the desperate rattle of gunfire.

  


“Ooh. Is that for me?” Tony asked, firing his suits thrusters and taking off into the sky, headed towards the sound of even more explosions.

  


As he cleared another rooftop, he paused, hovering in the air as he took in the scene.

  


“It is,” he remarked in vicious satisfaction as he spotted the ongoing battle.

  


In the street, one of the Mandarin’s crimson armored soldiers was simply walking unrelentingly towards a Humvee that currently had its front end wrapped around a light pole. The turret still worked, though, and the soldier manning it was certainly not scrimping on ammo as he fired continuously at the approaching suit. However, other than some ricochet sparks dancing across the surface of that gleaming scarlet armor and an ever so slight stagger in the armored foe’s steps, the bullets had virtually no effect, and the man continued his deadly approach.

  


Worse than that, though, the man wasn’t alone, as another of the goons wearing a knockoff of Tony’s own armor danced in the air around one of the military choppers, dodging gunfire as it returned fire of its own from the guns mounted on its forearms. Meanwhile, as those two “disciples” kept the military busy, down on the ground, yet another of the Mandarin’s armored goons simply strode down the boulevard unopposed, missiles firing indiscriminately from his shoulder-mounted turrets to decimate the faces of the buildings he passed as throngs of civilians screamed and ran.

  


As Tony watched, the military chopper spun out of control, belting out fire and smoke as it spiraled to the ground to destroy still more of the once gleaming city, the armored goon fighting it landing to join his fellow in the carefree destruction of the buildings around them.

  


Hidden behind his mask, Tony gave a grim, bloodthirsty smile.

  


There were three of the Mandarin’s goons down there. And he only needed one to still be able to answer his questions when he was finished.

  


“Happy birthday to me,” he whispered, repulsors whining as they charged up to full power.

  


* * *

  


**The hospital**

  


Harry slowly blinked as he stared up at the blank white ceiling, reacclimating to the feel of being back in his body once more.

  


It was … less than pleasant.

  


For one thing, everything felt _heavier_ than it did when he was a spirit. Like he was lying underwater, and there was a light but very noticeable pressure constantly weighing down on him.

  


For another, everything _hurt_.

  


Though, that probably had more to do with the rampant burns stretching across his skin than with simply being in a living body once more.

  


Almost without thinking, he reached for that strange power inside that he had become so reliant on in the astral plane. It felt a bit more sluggish in the physical world, a bit weaker and slower in answering his call, but answer his call it did.

  


He gave a reflexive sigh of relief as his power filled his aching body, soothing the stabbing pains that throbbed and spiked with every beat of his heart. Unfortunately, it replaced the feeling with a faint but relentless itch across virtually every inch of his skin, which he didn’t much care for, but admittedly, it was still preferable to the jaw-clenching agony, so he maintained his hold on the power.

  


However, as he tried to raise his arms to scratch, he learned two things.

  


His right arm was inexplicably unresponsive. And his left felt like it was strapped to the bed or something.

  


Looking down, though, he saw a very familiar mess of brown hair resting on his left bicep, while the girl’s arms were wrapped tightly around the rest of his limb like she was a human python, and he her prey.

  


He smiled at his friend’s behavior before turning to his other arm.

  


His smile faded.

  


Ending less than halfway down to where his elbow should be was just a bandaged stump.

  


For several long moments, he simply stared, his eyes tracing the empty stretch of blanket where his mind kept insisting his arm was supposed to be.

  


But it wasn’t.

  


Almost without thinking, he tried to lift his nonexistent hand so he get a closer look and verify that it wasn’t there.

  


He snorted at the asinine impulse.

  


Curiously, though, while he consciously recognized that his arm was gone, it still _felt_ like it was right there just as it always was, his jumbled mind insisting that he should be looking at a clenching fist right that second.

  


But he wasn’t.

  


However, as his disoriented mind still made him attempt to move and flex a nonexistent right arm, his left registered the feel of movement from the girl currently cutting off circulation to his one remaining hand.

  


Turning, he saw her lift her head and blearily blink at the room in dim, sleepy confusion as she woke up. Mercifully, she unwrapped one of her arms from his lightly tingling limb in order to rub at her eyes. As she did, though, he made note of one interesting and highly important fact.

  


“You’ve been crying,” he said aloud, a teasing smirk spreading across his face.

  


“No I haven’t. My eyes were sweating,” she reflexively rebutted, pausing in rubbing the sleep out of her eyes in order to glare at him as he let out a snicker. Suddenly, though, she froze dead still as her sleep-drunk brain processed just what the sound of his voice and the glimmer of mirth in his open eyes meant.

  


“You’re awake,” she breathed, staring down at him in shock.

  


“No, I’m just talking in my sleep,” he informed her. “Don’t warn the tadpoles!” he suddenly yelled to a random corner of the room as if he was still dreaming.

  


For several moments, she simply sat there staring at him with her mouth opening and closing silently.

  


Without a word, she threw herself at him in a hug, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck and inadvertently pulling on one of his IVs in the process, causing him a sharp stab of pain followed by a more profound itching sensation.

  


He silently acknowledged that he probably deserved that.

  


As she pulled back, he noticed a renewed wetness in her eyes.

  


“Shut up, Harry. You’re already in the hospital, but I’m not above making you need a few more bandages,” she preemptively warned him, wiping her eyes and shooting him a threatening glare.

  


He wisely kept his mouth shut.

  


After all, he could always use this on her later instead.

  


As much as she seemed to want to maintain her glare to make sure her warning sank in, though, she just couldn’t seem to manage it, her wide eyes staring as if drinking in the sight of him finally awake.

  


This time, her hug was more gentle and careful, but no less fierce as she wrapped him in her arms in a blend of pure relief and near possessiveness.

  


“I’m so glad you’re back,” she whispered, squeezing him more tightly.

  


His own traitorous eyes watering slightly, he reached up to envelop her in his own arms, momentarily forgetting about his missing appendage in the process as his confused brain still insisted that the limb was right there and currently wrapping around her waist just like he told it to, thank you very much.

  


Lightly shivering, she pulled back slightly, staring deeply into his eyes as her soft brown hair draped down like a curtain shutting out all the world except for the two of them as he stared back at her.

  


Suddenly, she smirked.

  


“You’re crying too,” she gloated as she took in the wetness lining his bright green eyes.

  


“Am not. They’re just a little watery because of all these fluids they’re pumping into me,” he argued defensively.

  


“Mm-hmm,” she responded disbelievingly as she sat back lightly snickering at him.

  


After a moment, though, her smile faded, replaced by a somber look of concern.

  


“How are you feeling?” she asked quietly, her eyes determinedly fixed on his own even as their light twitching revealed that she was consciously forcing them to avoid looking at something else.

  


Harry, on the other hand, had no such compunction about turning and staring at his bandaged nub, which his brain still insisted led to a perfectly healthy and simply invisible limb.

  


“Like I should take up drumming and tour with Def Leppard,” he answered dryly.

  


After a moment, she wordlessly took his left hand in hers, gently entwining their fingers as she looked at him in soft comfort and unrelenting support.

  


He squeezed her hand back in gratitude.

  


As they quietly looked at each other, though, she suddenly sat up straight with a bolt of alarm.

  


“Wait a minute, you’re awake! I need to get your doctor!” she exclaimed, pawing at the tangle of blankets and wires next to his hand to find the button that would summon a nurse. However, he quickly grabbed her hand with his own to stop her.

  


“Wait,” he told her. “What’s happened since I’ve been asleep? And where is everyone?”

  


“I don’t know,” she confessed with a helpless shrug. “I’ve been here with you. The last I saw Tony and Pepper was when some redheaded woman I didn’t recognize told them there was something they needed to see and they left. She seemed worried, but I don’t know what it was about. I … I didn’t want to leave you alone.” She squeezed his hand more tightly.

  


He nodded in appreciation, but also concern. The pit in his stomach hadn’t let up upon making it out of the astral plane. He had a bad feeling that something terrible was happening, and wherever it was going down, he needed to be there.

  


“Please tell me you brought my earpiece,” he begged her.

  


She gave him a flat look. “Please. What do I look like?” she rebutted with a smile, reaching into a small pouch at her waist and producing a tiny black device.

  


“A beautiful, beautiful person,” he answered with a grin, gratefully accepting the device and placing it in his ear.

  


She smiled brightly at him.

  


“Harry!” his virtual intelligence Jo exclaimed the moment the device was in place. “Are you alright?”

  


“Hey, Jo. Yeah, I’m fine, I think,” he assured her. “Though I’m concerned about what all I might have missed. What’s happened? And where’s Tony?”

  


After all, whatever this bad feeling he had was about, even money said Tony was somehow involved.

  


“At the moment? My guess would be Hollywood,” Jo answered.

  


“I get the feeling he isn’t just there to take in the sights, is he?” he asked, that bad feeling growing worse.

  


“While you were asleep, the Mandarin hijacked most of the television networks on the western seaboard, broadcasting a threat to attack Hollywood and challenging Tony and the military to try and stop him.”

  


“And Tony suited up to try?” Harry asked rhetorically. “When is this attack scheduled to take place?”

  


“About five minutes ago,” Jo admitted.

  


Without hesitating, he lifted his left hand to his face and began gnawing at the tape holding the IV in place.

  


“What on earth are you doing?!” his friend exclaimed in shock as he pulled the IV out of his hand with a tug of his teeth and a stab of pain before she could gather herself to stop him.

  


“Getting out of here,” he told her, grabbing at another cluster of wires taped to his chest.

  


Before he could, however, she grabbed his shoulders and pushed them flat against the bed.

  


“Harry, stop! You’re _hurt_! You need to stay here in the hospital!” she insisted.

  


“And let Tony face whatever the Mandarin wants to throw at him all by himself? I don’t think so,” he argued, struggling to throw off her tight grip, though succeeding only in pushing her to grab him more tightly as she leaned on his shoulders with all her weight to keep him restrained.

  


“He’ll be fine! He’s Iron Man, after all!” she pointed out to him, grunting as she fought against his struggling.

  


He didn’t waste time arguing with her. He simply struggled harder to free himself so he could get out of there, not even noticing the distinct lack of pain that should be coming from all his burns thanks to his thrashing.

  


Just as he didn’t notice himself drawing more and more deeply on his power in response to his distress.

  


_I’ve got to get out of here_ , he kept thinking. _I need to get home, see if just maybe he hasn’t finished suiting up yet. And if he has, I need to gear up myself so I can help him_.

  


Grunting, he found himself wrapped even more tightly in his stubborn friend’s grip as she tried to force him to stay in bed.

  


_I’ve got to get home_ , he thought again, more desperate and determined than ever as his power crackled unnoticed beneath his skin. _I have to!_

  


With a loud crack, the pair of struggling teens vanished from the upscale Malibu hospital.

  


* * *

  


**The Chinese Theatre**

  


With an almighty crash, Tony’s battered form came to an abrupt rest in a pile of broken seats and tangled reels of film.

  


“Doing well, are we, sir?” Jarvis asked in a mixture of cheekiness and concern.

  


“Of course. I’ve got them right where I want them,” Tony assured him, staggering to his feet only to trip and fall back into the pile of rubble as the room around him spun.

  


Meanwhile, the lightly damaged trio of armored Mandarin soldiers dropped from the vaguely Tony-shaped hole in the roof to hover in the air in front of him.

  


“Alright, here’s the deal, Idiots One through Three,” the battered billionaire called out in a faint slur as he climbed to his feet with moderately more success. “Two of you are going to be dying shortly. I know, so sad.” Their near featureless helmets turned as the armored terrorists looked at each other. “ _But_ … whoever surrenders first will have the honor of living slightly longer than your two buddies. So, any takers?”

  


As one, their shoulder-mounted missile launchers turned to aim at him with a mechanical whine.

  


“I guess not,” Tony remarked as the four of them continued to very thoroughly destroy the famous landmark theatre from the inside out.

  


* * *

  


**Elsewhere**

  


As the pair of alarmed teens hurtled through space at the unintended behest of Harry’s magic, Harry found himself remembering his experience using his power to gently and easily teleport about in the astral plane.

  


This felt absolutely nothing like that.

  


All around him, some unknowable weight seemed to press down on every inch of his skin, squeezing and dragging at his body as if he was being forced through a rubber tube not much bigger than your standard hose. And all the while, his vision was assaulted with swirling, broken images of who knows what rushing past at a breakneck pace.

  


Without warning, all of it simply stopped dead between one crushing, dizzying moment and the next, leaving them both to collapse painfully and gratefully onto what felt like concrete.

  


As he lay there, his ears caught the sound of vomiting, which he certainly sympathized with as his own stomach heaved and lurched dangerously.

  


“You alright?” he asked weakly.

  


The sound of more hurling answered him.

  


Groaning, he leveraged himself to his feet, where he stood swaying for several moments as he teetered on the fine line between standing and collapsing.

  


Finally, his unwitting travel partner stopped her hurling long enough to croak at him.

  


“What … the hell … was that … Stark?” she demanded hoarsely, still on her hands and knees as she clutched her mouth to keep from adding to the disgusting puddle in front of her.

  


“Magic,” he answered her. “I think.”

  


Turning, she fixed him with a beady, red-eyed stare of incredulity.

  


“Yeah, apparently, I have magical powers,” he brought her up to speed. “Found out about them during my little power nap. Crazy, right?”

  


Her red-rimmed eyes narrowed dangerously. “You know, that threat I made in the hospital still stands,” she warned him, clearly not believing his “I have magical powers” story, for some reason.

  


Sadly, they were interrupted before he could assure her that he did, in fact, have magical powers.

  


“Young sir? My sensors didn’t register you entering the premises, though I am certainly glad to see you are feeling well,” Jarvis suddenly sounded from around them.

  


It was at this point that Harry finally paid attention to where they had ended up and saw that they were in the mansion workshop, older models of Tony’s suits lining several of the walls around them.

  


“Jarvis,” Harry greeted. “I heard about the Mandarin’s threat. I don’t suppose Tony–”

  


“Grabbed a suit and ran off half-cocked? Would you expect him to do any different?” Jarvis sardonically replied.

  


“Well, it would make for a nice change of pace if he did,” Harry replied with an annoyed head shake, shrugging off his lingering dizziness and striding towards one of his desks. Grabbing a vaguely hearing-aid-shaped device, he somewhat clumsily wrapped it around his right ear using his left hand.

  


“What do you think you’re doing?” his now recovered friend asked somewhat waspishly as she watched him finish situating the neural transmitter and step up to a nearby computer, where he slowly and awkwardly began typing in commands.

  


“Planning a flight to Majorca. I hear it’s lovely this time of year,” he answered facetiously as he hit the last key.

  


With a low, mechanical noise, plates in the floor slid back, and one of the suits adorning the walls slowly moved towards the center of the room along a revealed conveyor belt.

  


“Are you not hearing me, Harry? _You are not well!_ ” she yelled, stalking towards him with a furious and resolute glare. “You need to go back to … the … hospital.”

  


Her voice trailed off uncertainly as she caught a glimpse under one of his bandages, which had come loose at some point, whether due to their struggle in the hospital or their rough landing after his inadvertent teleportation.

  


The reason she froze, though, was that the skin underneath wasn’t burned.

  


Following her gaze, Harry stared in surprise at that very detail himself. Reaching up with his left hand, he peeled more of the bandage away from his skin along his ribs. Large stretches of smooth, undamaged skin revealed themselves along the edges of the wound, though near the center of what once was likely a grievous burn, the skin was still a bit red and blistered. Even as they watched, though, those damaged areas ever so slowly shrunk, his skin healing before their eyes at a slow but noticeable rate.

  


“How … how is this possible?” she whispered in shock as she traced those retreating edges of the wound.

  


Harry, while shocked as well, knew just the answer.

  


“Magic,” he answered again, finally understanding the itching sensation he had been experiencing ever since he embraced his power back in the hospital.

  


It was his skin slowly healing under the influence of his power.

  


Her fingers froze. “Why do I get the disturbing feeling that that isn’t just a really bad joke?” she asked.

  


“Because it’s true,” he told her, peeling another bandage away from his chest, revealing more of the small and continuously shrinking burns that once blackened large swathes of his skin.

  


“You with magic powers,” she tried to process, “… this is not a comforting thought.”

  


“Hilarious,” he informed her, watching as the armored suit came to a stop at the assembly platform, where it waited to be equipped.

  


“Wait a minute, Harry,” she told him, as she saw him prepare to put on the suit and just fly out of there. “Just because your burns are healing doesn’t mean you’re totally out of the woods. What about all the stuff that happened to your brain to put you in that coma? What about any internal injuries you might have? Just stop and think about this, please.”

  


He stopped and looked deep into her eyes. “Tony’s out there fighting the Mandarin alone,” he said quietly. “Sure, maybe there won’t be much I can do, and maybe it’ll be dangerous for to even try, but he’s family. And tell me you wouldn’t be willing to risk everything to help a parent who needed you.”

  


She remained silent, unable to make that claim, just as he knew she couldn’t.

  


Into the silence, Jarvis interjected himself with a synthetic throat clearing. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but the situation is a bit more dire than I think you believe.”

  


“How do you mean?” Harry asked, a pit of dread settling in his stomach.

  


“Mr. Stark forbade me from informing anyone about his current condition,” Jarvis began, “but since his illness has already been forcefully disclosed to you, along with everyone else, I can now freely tell you that his palladium poisoning is at dangerously high levels.”

  


That cold pit of dread grew colder. “How high is ‘dangerously high’?” he asked, his mouth suddenly dry.

  


“High enough that simply wearing his suit in combat may be enough to push him into the terminal stage of his condition,” Jarvis explained.

  


“It’s that high …” Harry breathed, his eyes distant and unseeing as he tried to understand. “But that doesn’t make sense. His condition shouldn’t be anywhere near that bad yet!”

  


“Wait, you knew about this?” his friend asked in surprise and confusion.

  


“Of course I knew about it,” he told her. “I use arc reactor tech too. I have for years. Tony may have innovated the tech, but I’m probably as much of an expert in it as he is by now. So yes, I knew what it would do to him to have the thing actually inside his body all this time. But none of my calculations suggested that his condition would be this bad already. The numbers I ran indicated that he should still have years to go before it became this severe! It doesn’t make sense!”

  


“I am afraid that continued use of the Iron Man suit accelerates his condition,” Jarvis clarified. “And Mr. Stark hasn’t exactly been stingy with its use in recent years. At this point, however, its use may be enough to make his condition fatal. I informed Mr. Stark of this eventuality before he left, but he dismissed my concern.”

  


Harry’s eyes were wide. “Using the suit … accelerates his condition,” he slowly repeated. “I … hadn’t considered that.”

  


After several moments, he was jolted out of his stunned reverie by a soft hand resting gently on his shoulder. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  


His mind racing, he darted back to his desk, tossing aside file folders and lazily forgotten tools before he found his notebook. Pressing it flat against the table, he hastily flipped through it with his left hand, muttering furiously under his breath all the while. Finally, though, he found what he was looking for.

  


“I’m going to go give Tony some backup and get him out of his suit as quickly as I can,” he answered her, pointing to the hand-drawn designs covering the opened pages. “And you’re going to build this.”

  


Curious, she stepped forward, only for her eyes to bulge as she saw what he was pointing to.

  


“Are you crazy? I can’t build that by myself!” she protested, eyes nearly crossing as she scanned the formulae covering the page supplementing the ridiculously advanced technobabble.

  


“You have to. If what Jarvis says is true, then we’re running out of time. I can’t be in two places at once. If I’m going to save Tony, I need you to do all you can to get at least this part up and running while I’m gone. Use our lab. There’s gotta be some machines with parts you can modify to make this easier. Like Trial 14B. That should have some of what you need.”

  


“And what is all this?” she asked, struggling to interpret the designs.

  


“Hopefully? The first step,” he answered. “Like I said, I’ve known about his condition for a while. Even though I thought he had a lot more time, I’ve still been busting my ass to find a solution.”

  


“And this is it?” she asked.

  


His face twisted into a grimace. “No,” he admitted.

  


She looked at him in confusion.

  


“I’ve never been able to figure this whole thing out,” he told her. “There was always something missing, or something I just couldn’t figure out how to make work. But this design should at least be a start, as a lot of my theorized designs used it as a foundation, even if none of them turned out to be feasible in the end. I’ll just have to figure out what I need to make this work while I’m saving Tony, somehow.” He clenched his jaw tightly as he recognized how much of a fruitless wild goose chase this was probably going to be.

  


However, yet again, her soft hand on his shoulder snapped him out of it. “Alright, Harry,” she told him. “I won’t pretend I understand all this already,” her brows furrowed in concentration as she scanned the design, “but it’s starting to make some sense the longer I look at it, and I think I see what you’re talking about with how the machine for Trial 14B could be modified to work here. I’ll take care of it.” She turned back to him. “Just … make sure you don’t land yourself back in the hospital, alright? Because I definitely won’t be able to pull this off myself.”

  


Slowly, a smile worked its way across his face. “Me neither,” he admitted.

  


Smiling warmly, she pulled him into another hug, clutching him fiercely as he returned the favor, even with just one arm.

  


Even though his stupid brain _still_ insisted his second arm was still there.

  


Finally, though, they let each other go.

  


“Okay, Jarvis,” he called out to Tony’s VI. “Let’s get me suited up. I have an idiot to save.”

  


With a mechanical whir, robotic arms reached out from the ceiling and floor to dissemble the gleaming silver armor of the Mark II Iron Man suit.

  


“Wait, your bracers!” his friend suddenly remembered, staring down at his bare (if bandaged) forearms in near dread, knowing what could happen if he didn’t have those devices pumping arc reactor energy into his body.

  


Stepping into the boots of the armor, he looked back at her with a grin. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” he told her as the system started to arm him in the suit. “I’ve outgrown those things. I think it’s time we found out exactly what I can do when I’m not shackling myself.”

  


By the look on her face, this was a notion that filled her with both curiosity and horror.

  


“The world is doomed,” she prophesied, gathering up his designs.

  


* * *

  


**The hospital**

  


Having grabbed yet another cup of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike coffee in order to fortify herself, Pepper tiredly stepped back into Harry’s room, preparing to sit and fret over Harry while also sitting and fretting about Tony.

  


She was an exceptionally talented multitasker.

  


However, two steps into the room, her spine went rigid in shock, the cup of gritty black water slipping from her nerveless fingers to splash unnoticed all over the pristine white floor.

  


“Ms. Potts? Is everything alright?” Natalie asked, poking her head in the door after hearing the sudden clatter of her not-coffee cup. However, no answer was necessary, because she quickly saw what had frozen the other redhead.

  


Natalie’s eyebrows climbed halfway to her hair.

  


Turning, Pepper bolted past Natalie to fetch the doctor. Meanwhile, Natalie simply stood there staring at the empty bed that not five minutes ago had held a completely comatose and badly burned teenager, who had somehow just disappeared without anyone being seen entering or leaving this room.

  


Even by her.

  


Reaching up, Natalie tapped a small earbud discretely placed in her ear, her gentle, approachable expression vanished behind a mask of cool professionalism.

  


“Sir? We’ve got a situation …”

  


* * *

  


**Not the hospital**

  


As Harry zipped through the skies in his forcibly borrowed Iron Man suit, he was forced to face one rather annoying detail.

  


These things were almost impossible to fly with only one hand. As he learned when he was sent spiraling through the air for about the umpteenth time as the result of just a minor course correction, all because he couldn’t use the repulsor in the right glove to correct himself.

  


Plus, the fact remained that he hadn’t ever actually flown in one of these things before, and it wasn’t exactly as simple as riding a bike, as he regretfully discovered.

  


And so, yet again, his attempt at using his left gauntlet and right boot jets to compensate for his inability to use the one in his immobile right arm spun him out of control before he was sent crashing to the ground, bouncing across the unforgiving pavement before coming to an inelegant stop wrapped up in a now thoroughly mangled street light.

  


“You are truly your father’s son,” Jo commented in amusement at his very Tony-esque landing.

  


“Hey, don’t make me lock you in a Twilight fandom server,” he threatened as he shook his head clear.

  


Jo demonstrated a grand gift for silence after that.

  


Climbing to his feet with a groan, the embarrassed teen looked around at the blessedly empty highway before turning and glaring at the gleaming silver arm dangling stiffly and uselessly at his right side.

  


Even with the fairly intuitive control over the systems granted to him by the neural transmitter, his adaptation of the tech that allowed Tony to control his suits without having to verbally articulate every single command to Jarvis, the fact remained that the suit was intended to follow and enhance the natural movements of one’s body. Without his own arm to guide it, the suit’s right arm was nothing but dead weight.

  


And he didn’t exactly have time to screw around with this suit long enough to master sustained three-jet flight.

  


“Time for Plan B, I guess,” he reluctantly muttered.

  


Once again, he slowly gazed all around him, carefully verifying the complete absence of any other living thing in his vicinity.

  


This time, though, he was concerned about far more than embarrassing cellphone videos of his flight attempt.

  


“Alright, Harry, you’ve got this. You’ve done it a hundred times, after all,” he nervously tried to psych himself up. “The only difference is this time, it’ll be you in control and not some psychotic spirit.” His left hand clenched and unclenched. “I hope.”

  


Swallowing the lump in his throat, he closed his eyes and controlled his breathing, embracing one of the many mental exercises he’d learned over the years to help control his dusty little problem.

  


It was a little more nerve-wracking this time, though, because he wasn’t trying to suppress the creature.

  


He was trying to _use_ it.

  


Fighting off the long-ingrained reflexes currently screaming at him, he reached down into the core of himself and made contact with the swirling, amorphous entity, willingly drawing it out into the living world for the first time in his life.

  


Opening his eyes, the advanced HUD system inside the helmet spazzed, glitching and flashing warning lights at him as he watched his left arm, and the gleaming silver armor enveloping it, transform into an idly swirling cloud of black dust. Ignoring how the suit’s systems were trying to reconcile what registered as entire swathes of the armor simply disappearing, he slowly continued to draw the creature’s power out, sinking into it like a nervous swimmer gently easing himself into an ice-cold pool.

  


Every remaining muscle in his body felt tense as the shifting black mass creeped along every inch of his body, slowly replacing it with itself, until all that remained was his head, held stiffly aloof from the creature’s form like he was desperately keeping his face from submerging underwater.

  


Until finally, he let go.

  


The last inch of his body transformed, and for several moments, he simply … stood? … there, acclimating to the strange, alien feel of this new form.

  


The fist thing that grabbed his attention was that, even though he didn’t have eyes, he could still see.

  


In fact, he could see _everything_.

  


The sky above him, the ground below him, the ocean crashing off in the distance beside him, the empty stretch of road before and behind him, _everything_. As if his entire form was taking in light and translating it for his non-existent brain, he took in a completely 360-degree vision of the world around his shifting black form.

  


His non-corporeal head spun, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of unstructured stimulus flooding into a very human mind that wasn’t really designed to handle anything more than binocular vision.

  


It was too much. He had to tune it out. Head still spinning, he tried focusing on just one thing, staring intently at the mangled post he had crashed into. As he did, the rest of his 360-degree vision gradually fell to the wayside, drifting out of focus like extremely robust peripheral vision.

  


Carefully, he moved his focus from the post, slowly tracking his vision across the street and delicately raising it to stare at the horizon, and his intended target. As he did, he felt his focus come under strain, the rest of the overwhelming visual stimulus pressing in on his mind, but he pressed on, maintaining his concentration.

  


So intense was his focus, it took him several moments to register the rest of the sensations coming from his non-corporeal body.

  


It felt _light,_ just like he had back in the astral plane. Turning his visual focus to his body, he was amused to notice that he had contained his shifting black form to a dense, vaguely humanoid shape. Once again fighting his panicky impulses, though, he loosened more of his tightly held control over that form, allowing it to flex outwards until it once again resembled a slowly shifting black cloud of inky-black dust that sparked with emerald green light, assuming its native form rather than trying to stay closer to his human one.

  


And all this while, he felt not a hint of the creature’s vicious, all-consuming mind.

  


It was really gone.

  


He was finally free.

  


Unable to help himself, he let out a delighted laugh, which echoed out from the creature’s form that had previously only ever screeched or clicked or growled.

  


Honestly, the distorted, chorusing laughter was much creepier than any of those sounds had ever been.

  


Thankfully, that helped to snap him out of his reverie, reminding him of the urgent deadline he was on.

  


“ _Alright. Time to see what this baby can do_ ,” he said aloud, the creature’s “voice” distorting and self-chorusing his voice.

  


However, he had barely thought about moving before the creature was suddenly darting into the air in a sudden, lightning-quick burst of speed.

  


The screaming he did actually sounded relatively close to what the creature’s “voice” was used to emitting, though slightly more tinged with shock and alarm than the creature’s usual rage and hunger for destruction.

  


Meanwhile, as Harry desperately wrestled with the creature’s jittery, lightning-quick powers of flight, he came to realize that using this creature’s power wasn’t exactly like the self-powered flight he had expected it to be.

  


It was more like being strapped to the roof of a racecar that didn’t really have any speeds other than completely non-moving and screaming along at a few hundred miles per hour, and didn’t bother with petty things like accelerating or decelerating, either, simply jerking to a sudden stop or blasting back to top speed at the faintest hint of a related thought from him. On top of that, it also seemed completely uninterested in the laws of inertia, frequently pulling lightning-quick 90-degree turns with no loss of speed, again at just the hint of a thought from him.

  


He was suddenly very glad he didn’t possess a stomach in this form, as he suspected he’d be redecorating the road quite heavily with its contents if he did. As it was, all he could do was hang on for dear life and try to keep this alien, still uncontrollable form (if in a different way than it used to be) headed in at least the general direction of his target.

  


At the speed at which this new form moved, however, it didn’t take long before he left the mostly empty Malibu highways and started passing over the dense city streets of West Hollywood.

  


Unfortunately, that was when he had a passing thought about moving closer to the ground to get a closer look at things.

  


Which the obscurus’ power apparently interpreted to mean spike yourself straight into the asphalt in front of everyone.

  


Going by all the terrified screaming and wildly veering cars, he gathered that watching a living black dust cloud suddenly faceplant into the street with enough force to pulverize asphalt was a somewhat alarming experience.

  


“ _Sorry!_ ” he called out as he forced his new form out of the crater and back into the sky. Though, given the nonplussed and even outright disturbed expressions from the watching civilians, hearing a terrifying dust creature apologize in a clicking, self-chorusing growl was less than comforting.

  


Oh well.

  


Once more passing over the rooftops, he relinquished some of his tightly held focus on his sight, allowing himself to start processing more of his 360-degree vision, primarily involving what he could see below and in front of him. Even that felt somewhat overwhelming, making him almost wish he was capable of getting a headache in this form in order to help ground the sensation, but no such luck.

  


He was, however, able to get a pretty all-encompassing bird’s eye view of the city. Which made it fairly easy to spot the columns of smoke rising off in the distance, which quickly grew as a chorus of explosions rocked the area.

  


“ _Oh, but Tony, how ever will I find you when you are busy being so subtle?_ ” Harry asked himself in quiet amusement.

  


The obscurus’ growly, clicky voice didn’t quite capture sarcasm all that well, but it was the thought that counted.

  


Swooping over the rooftops, Harry made a beeline for the fight in progress, ready to save Tony’s stupid metal ass yet again.

  


He should really start a punch card or something.

  


Cresting the final building top, he passed through the billowing column of smoke rising from a downed chopper, making it seem to all the world as if that noxious column of black smoke had simply come alive and was gathering itself overhead, preparing to devour those below. However, he didn’t particularly care about what he looked like at that moment. His focus was solely on the trio engaged in pitched battle in the street below.

  


Zipping low about the rubble-strewn street in front of what may have once been the famous Chinese Theatre, a trio of armored Mandarin soldiers were demonstrating an impressive amount of airborne agility, given the bulkier, more heavily armored suits they wore. This was doubly impressive due to how their suits were torn and battle-scarred, most of their blood-red paint scraped away. However, their heavy armor plating still seemed to be holding up annoyingly well, as the damage they had sustained seemed to be doing little to hinder the suits’ functions as they flew and fired on the lighter, even more agile red and gold form of Tony.

  


As for Tony, his armor seemed to be in rougher shape, constantly spitting bursts of sparks from his damaged servos, and the whole thing looked like it had been repeatedly run over with a lawnmower, with deep gouges and scars decorating virtually every inch. However, his suit’s flight and weapons capabilities still seemed operational, and combined with Tony’s vastly superior experience in using both, he seemed to be holding his own against his opponents’ obvious edge in numbers.

  


But only barely.

  


However, as Harry watched, one of the Mandarin soldiers managed to land a hit with his own repulsor blast, violently driving Tony into the side of an abandoned car. The car crumbled around his stunned form, enveloping him like a heavy metal straitjacket as the trio of Mandarin soldiers hovered in front of him, weapons about to fire.

  


Harry saw red.

  


Without thinking, he let out a vicious screech that finally perfectly suited his furiously writhing black form as it echoed out across the ruined street. Startled, the trio of soldiers paused in their attack and looked up, spotting his ghastly form at last.

  


He didn’t give them time to do more than that, however. With a thought, his amorphous form snapped forward, slamming into the motionless soldiers and sending their heavy metal forms flying as if they were nothing more than tennis balls.

  


Unfortunately, they weren’t the only ones struck by his new alien form. Tony joined them, hit with enough force to drive him completely through the crumbled car and send him bouncing across the pavement, sparks flying from where armor met asphalt.

  


Shocked, Harry simply hung there, his shapeless black form shifting more slowly as he stared at Tony’s downed form.

  


_Whoops_ , he thought in chagrin.

  


Fortunately, Tony wasn’t called a superhero for nothing, and he soon climbed painfully back to his feet, armor dented and scarred even further, but still functional. However, the armored billionaire barely even seemed to notice. He was simply standing there staring at Harry’s shifting black form, utterly motionless.

  


Harry instinctively tried to cock his head in confusion, but all he succeeded in doing was causing part of his ceaselessly shifting mass to whirl about even more randomly.

  


Suddenly, though, Tony’s mask slid up, as if he had to see what he was looking at with his own two eyes.

  


And he looked horrified.

  


“ _Nooo_ ,” he heard the man breath in a tone of chilling despair.

  


At that, Harry finally realized what the man’s problem was.

  


Tony didn’t know he had gained control over the obscurus. He thought he was looking at the raging black creature of death that didn’t really have any hobbies besides chaos and mayhem.

  


_Oh, this is just going to be too much fun_ , Harry thought with an internal grin.

  


“ _You know, I wasn’t exactly expecting streamers and a parade, but you could at least act happy to see me, you know_ ,” he petulantly chided the man.

  


Tony’s face. Was. _Priceless_.

  


“… Harry?” the man finally asked, looking more lost than he had ever seen him.

  


“ _Well of course it’s me! Who else would I be?_ ” the shapeless black mass that had formerly been known as nothing but an uncontrollable beast with a penchant for mindless carnage and destruction answered in a tone that said Tony was fairly slow to even have to ask.

  


The renowned genius looked like he was experiencing a short in his brain.

  


Deciding to help him out, Harry slowly relinquished the obscurus’ power, pushing it back to that place deep inside and forcing his own body to slowly re-coalesce from the roiling black dust.

  


Finally, he was left standing in front of Tony in all his human glory, even flipping the mask up to prove to the flabbergasted Tony that yes, it was indeed him. In the back of his mind, though, Harry felt a crushing disappointment when he noticed that he still seemed to be missing his right arm, despite how his entire body was just disintegrated and reformed out of virtually nothing, which he had quietly hoped would mean his body would be fully restored when it reconstituted. However, he also recognized that he didn’t yet understand the mechanics of this eminently _alien_ creature’s power. It was possible that the human form it returned him to was decided based on some kind of residual self-imaging on his part, crafting him a body that matched his internal conception of himself, thus maintaining his missing limb simply because he subconsciously knew it was missing in his human form. Or, it could be that the creature’s power had normally returned him to what the obscurus itself had considered his default human state, and when he destroyed its mind back in the astral plane, he had destroyed this knowledge as well, essentially forcing a hard reset of this power and making it establish a new conception of what his default human shape should be when he next assumed the obscurus’ form, and since he was already missing his arm when this happened, this missing limb was simply considered a part of his body’s natural state, and so he retained the injury when his human body was reformed.

  


Or, in even simpler terms, “Because magic was weird” seemed like a decent explanation.

  


For now.

  


At the moment, though, Harry was more focused on Tony, who was still staring at him speechlessly. Idly, he wondered how the man would react. Would he try to give him a hug? Or maybe ask how he had finally managed to gain control of the obscurus? Or would he simply ask how he had woken up from his coma? Or maybe he’d go with the generic ‘How are you feeling’.

  


Tony opted for none of the above.

  


“… Are you wearing my suit?” the man asked instead, narrowed eyes fixed on the gleaming silver Mark II armor.

  


Harry gaped at his adoptive father.

  


“Seriously?! _That’s_ all you have to say to me?! I don’t even get a ‘Hello’?! Or even a ‘Glad you’re feeling better’?!” Harry demanded in outrage.

  


“Yeah, hi, good to finally see you out of bed. Are you wearing my suit?” Tony repeated fixedly.

  


Harry simply stared at him in silent indignation, even as the armored Mandarin soldiers finally made their reappearance with a clatter of shrugged-off rubble and the mechanical grind of mangled joints.

  


“You’re an ass,” Harry informed Tony, lowering his mask. “And your friends are back for more.”

  


“Yeah, let’s just keep the focus on the whole ‘You’re wearing my suit’ issue here,” Tony requested, even as his own mask fell into place and he assumed a combative stance.

  


One of the terrorists fired a volley of missiles at them both, forcing him and Tony to scatter, Harry using the suit’s jets far more easily when it involved short bursts rather than sustained flight.

  


“You know, I can’t believe you,” Harry called out to Tony while firing a repulsor blast from his suit’s left gauntlet at an approaching Mandarin soldier. “I practically come back from the freaking dead, and all you can do is gripe that I’m using one of your old suits to help save your ass!” As another Mandarin soldier approached, Harry used the erratic movements of using only three out of four repulsor jets to force himself into a spin, driving the sole of his left boot into the armored face of the terrorist with bone-crushing force and a bright blue repulsor blast, sending the man flying. “I mean, all this thing was doing was collecting dust anyway!” he continued griping to Tony, who was engaged in airborne warfare against another opponent.

  


“It’s the principle of the matter,” Tony insisted, performing wild airborne maneuvers to evade the seemingly endless supply of missiles from the opponent flying after him only to turn around and blast the terrorist with a pair of repulsor blasts directly to the face, sending the man spiraling to the ground. “I don’t like people touching my stuff.”

  


“You think that’s bad? Wait till you find out I’m not wearing any pants under here,” Harry told him, firing an anti-tank missile from his suit’s forearm to blast another terrorist, who unfortunately tossed a car in front of himself at the last minute, saving himself from being completely annihilated, even if he was still sent flying from the blast.

  


Tony, meanwhile, was simply staring aghast at Harry, who made sure to do some deep lunges in his borrowed armor to nettle the man even further.

  


“Oh, you are so dead meat when we get home,” Tony threatened, grabbing a busted light pole and swinging it like a bat into another of the Mandarin soldiers, sending the man flying into what remained of the pretty thoroughly pulverized building fronts around them. “I’m talking grounded for life here.”

  


“Yeah, yeah,” Harry flippantly replied, centering himself as he reached for the obscurus’ power once again. He drew it into himself more quickly and easily this time, as he wasn’t fighting himself so much now that he’d confirmed that its mind was really gone and that it wouldn’t be attacking everyone when he transformed. And so, his armored human form quickly disappeared into the roiling, inky black mass of the obscurus, which once again made his head spin with its overwhelming 360-degree vision.

  


“Freaky,” he heard Tony comment as the man stared at his monstrous form. However, he tuned Tony out, trying to focus his jarring new senses on the three armored foes in front of him.

  


However, as he considered attacking them, his new form suddenly erupted in raging black tendrils that did indeed strike those three terrorists with monstrous force, but also tore into the pavement beneath him and the buildings around him.

  


And also slammed into Tony, who was standing next to him.

  


“Okay, we’re now looking at consecutive life grounding sentences here,” Tony groaned as he climbed out of his new crater.

  


Grimacing internally, Harry pushed his new power away, re-assuming his armored human form.

  


The obscurus may not be battling him for control any more, but he still didn’t understand the creature’s innately alien power yet, or how to use it.

  


Which meant he couldn’t use it safely in a fight, for the time being.

  


So maybe it was time to use the other power he had recently unlocked.

  


As Tony flew past him, charging at the now recovered trio of armored terrorists, Harry remained behind, brow furrowed in intent focus as he once more reached deep into the core of his being, but this time, he passed over the quietly waiting power of the obscurus and instead reached for a power that gently hummed in anticipation.

  


Watching Tony battle with the Mandarin soldiers, Harry once again felt his newly discovered magical power start thrumming through his veins, making every nerve tingle with electricity as he prepared to magically stomp some terrorist ass.

  


One of the armored goons broke away from the fight with Tony, heading towards Harry while his two fellows contended with Iron Man. The Mandarin’s “disciple” likely thought the silver teen would be easier pickings.

  


Harry was about to disabuse him of that notion.

  


Filled with his power, Harry lifted his left hand, and unleashed it.

  


…

  


… nothing.

  


Frowning, Harry tried pushing his power out, tried to force it towards the still approaching metal figure.

  


It didn’t work. Unlike in the astral plane, where magic had flowed from him like water, here it felt bound, and contained, either unable or unwilling to simply pass through his body and into the physical world.

  


Eyes wide, Harry remembered the armored man just in time, firing his jet boots and throwing himself backwards just in time to avoid a barrage of missiles. Skidding on the broken ground, Harry landed, pulling more deeply on his power to try and force it to work. Straining, it felt like pushing against a thick rubber barrier. It gave, but it didn’t break, keeping his power trapped inside where it was of exactly no use to him.

  


With a crunch of crumbling stone, the hulking armored terrorist landed right in front of him. Still struggling with his power, Harry lifted his left gauntlet and simply tried to blast the man with a repulsor. However, the man’s suit proved its worth when the man ducked out of the way with a mechanically enhanced, unnaturally quick movement, only to step forward and seize the teen’s left arm in a crushing grip.

  


“Shit!” Harry cursed in a panic, unable to pull the limb free, and beyond the help of the distracted Tony currently dealing with two of this guy’s fellow psychopaths. With a mental trigger, panels slid open on top of Harry’s armored shoulders, firing a series of shots directly at the face of the armored terrorist, but with the man’s heavy plating, they did little besides create sparks and make the man’s head jerk back.

  


On instinct, Harry drew even more deeply on his power, making it feel like he was about to burst from the amount of power coursing through him, but he still couldn’t figure out how to force any of it out into the physical world.

  


Without a word, the armored lunatic simply raised his own left gauntlet, revealing a bright blue repulsor disk that hummed with power as the man prepared to take the shot.

  


And in a moment of pure, thoughtless reflex, Harry reached up with his right arm and stopped him.

  


For several long seconds, Harry didn’t even realize anything was odd as he grappled with the taller man, his left gauntlet trapped in the man’s right, and the man’s left gauntlet trapped in his own unwavering right hand. But finally, Harry’s head snapped to stare in shock at that right arm, no longer hanging limply at his side, but instead pushing against his opponent’s hand as if it wasn’t simply a hollow metal shell.

  


With a start, Harry suddenly realized that while couldn’t figure out how to force his power outside of his body, his magic seemed to have forgotten that he was missing his right arm, filling that metal gauntlet just as it ran throughout the rest of his body.

  


And, going by the brilliant emerald light streaming from beneath those metal fingers, the power coursing through his gauntlet wasn’t quite as thoroughly contained as all the rest.

  


Grinning fiercely, Harry drew even deeper, forcing his power into the crackling, sparking right arm of his gleaming silver suit, making his fist glow more and more brightly with coruscating emerald light as it slowly crumpled the metal fist of the panicking armored terrorist.

  


And then, Harry fired the repulsor.

  


With a thunderous crackle, a massive incandescent beam of brilliant green energy fired from the gauntlet, streaming down the street and leaving a wide, glassy streak of melted asphalt in its wake as it passed through one of the armored terrorists fighting Tony, utterly vaporizing his screaming metal form before continuing on to detonate against a half-ruined building, removing the “half” from its descriptor.

  


Tony and the non-vaporized terrorist previously fighting him stared in slack-jawed astonishment that was clear even with their masks hiding their expressions.

  


As for the armored terrorist in front of Harry, his entire left arm was gone at the shoulder, along with much of his body armor and part of his torso, leaving the gasping man to fall to his knees before collapsing onto his face.

  


Stunned, Harry stared at the crackling, slightly melted right arm of his suit, which still moved and felt just like his own arm as it still thrummed with power, even if the amount of magic filling his body felt like it had very noticeably depreciated with the blast.

  


“Where the hell’d that come from?” Tony asked in astonishment, still standing next to the motionless Mandarin soldier. However, upon registering that his two fellows had been taken out with that last blast, the final remaining terrorist seemed to realize that he was in serious mortal danger from the silver-armored teen. However, rather than try to run, the remaining terrorist instead launched himself at Harry, determined to try and take down the teen while the latter was still distracted by his green-glowing arm.

  


Unfortunately for the terrorist, though, Harry’s attention wasn’t completely absorbed with his arm. As the armored lunatic flew at him, Harry lifted his glowing emerald arm and took aim, building up power even as the armored terrorist fired the last of his salvo of missiles at the teen.

  


Harry fired the repulsor, and once again, the street in front of him was lit by a coruscating beam of crackling green energy. However, this time, as it struck both the armored terrorist and his salvo of missiles, it didn’t simply disintegrate them. Instead, Harry watched, incredulous, as they turned to glass right before his eyes.

  


As the beam faded, it left nothing but perfect glass sculptures of missiles and an armored terrorist, which all shattered as they finally hit the ground.

  


For several moments, both Harry and Tony stared at his sparking right arm.

  


“Okay, that grounding thing can be negotiable,” Tony admitted nervously.

  


Grinning, Harry was about to make a retort when his right arm suddenly exploded in agony as a blast of energy tore through the half-melted metal arm of his suit, removing it above the elbow.

  


“Harry!” Tony yelled as the teen was driven to his knees, overwhelmed with both pain and astonishment at the fact that he experienced pain from his nonexistent right arm in the first place. Turning, Harry saw that the similarly one-armed terrorist was still alive, and had managed to flip himself onto his back and blast him with his one remaining repulsor glove, even as he panted and bled out from his own wound.

  


The repulsors on Tony’s boots charged up with a whine as the man prepared to charge at the downed terrorist, but he paused as both he and Harry saw what extended from the mangled remains of his suit’s arm.

  


It was a translucent, green-glowing image of Harry’s arm, recognizable to the teen as what his body had looked like in the astral plane.

  


Staring, Harry moved the astral limb, twisting its wrist and clenching its fingers, watching as it answered his every command just like any flesh and blood arm would. Curious, Harry funneled his power into the strange limb, watching as it glowed even brighter from the magic coursing through it. With a flick of his wrist, he tried to release that power, aiming to turn a lump of broken rubble into glass just like his power had done to that terrorist. However, as the rock was bathed in a green glow, only parts of it successfully transformed into warped, slightly cloudy glass. The rest simply sparked and crumbled.

  


Harry frowned at the limb. Apparently, the thing made it easier to channel his power, but his magic still didn’t work anywhere near as easily or intuitively as it had back on the astral plane.

  


_At least, not on its own, it doesn’t_ , he reflected, eyeing the mangled remains of his suit’s gauntlet lying on the ground.

  


However, while he and Tony were distracted with staring at his new ghostly arm, the terrorist still lying on the ground managed to overcome his own shock long enough to charge up his repulsor gauntlet with a whine, drawing Harry’s attention back to him at last.

  


Firing his boot jets, Harry launched himself at the downed terrorist, clenching his ghostly hand into a fist and burying it deep in the man’s glowing arc reactor as he flooded that limb with power.

  


The man’s bright blue reactor coursed with energy, swiftly being overtaken with a brilliant emerald glow from Harry’s magic as it began to overload. However, Harry didn’t want to detonate that reactor like he had to Vanko. Instead, he tried tweaking his magic, experimenting on how much he could control this new power of his even as the man’s gauntlet prepared to fire.

  


With a sudden whine, that gauntlet went dead, instantly powering down as Harry removed his ghostly appendage from the chest of the man’s armor, his once brilliant blue reactor now cold and dark, nothing but a dull black lump of coal where the advanced power source once rested.

  


Tony stepped up beside him to stare down in shock at what remained of the dying man’s reactor.

  


“Did you just perform elemental transmutation with that weird glowy ghost hand of yours?” Tony asked.

  


“I did indeed,” Harry answered.

  


The red and gold king of quips stared at the downed terrorist. “… Huh.”

  


Frowning, Harry glared down at the crippled terrorist. “So where’s your boss at, metalhead?” he asked.

  


The man said nothing, simply turning from the dead power source in his chest to stare at the teen responsible. To Harry’s surprise, though, the once glowing red eyes in the man’s mask suddenly lit up once again, suggesting a backup power source.

  


Though, the way they began flashing and beeping threateningly suggested something much worse.

  


“Bomb!” Harry yelled, blasting off with his jet boots. Moments behind him, Tony did the same, barely clearing the area before the downed terrorist detonated with a thunderous boom, scattering the ruined fragments of his metal armor all over the demolished street.

  


The ruined fragments of the man inside the suit were somewhat worse to look at, though.

  


Tony landed neatly on the street, while the teen in one-armed silver armor crashed with far less grace.

  


“Well that was disappointing,” Tony remarked, flipping his mask up as Harry climbed back to his feet. “I was really hoping to go all Zero Dark Thirty on his ass.” He coughed as he inhaled dust kicked up by the man blowing himself up.

  


“Yeah, what were you going to do, talk at him until he became so desperate for peace that he told you whatever you wanted to know just so you would grant him the sweet release of death?” Harry asked, flipping his own mask up as he continued to stare at and flex his strange new limb.

  


Tony gave him an indignant glare. However, that expression quickly faded as he stared at the son he had been so sure he had lost.

  


Reaching out, he hesitantly and awkwardly patted the teen on the shoulder. “Good to have you back, kid,” he lamely informed him.

  


Harry raised an eyebrow at the man. “Calm down, Tony. You’re becoming hysterical,” he dryly responded.

  


“You wanna see hysterical? Just look in the mirror when I hand you the bill for the multi-million-dollar suit you just trashed,” Tony bit back, gesturing to the suit’s missing arm.

  


Before Harry could point out that he trashed it saving Tony’s life, though, the air was rocked with the sound of distant but immense explosions that almost seemed to strike them with physical force.

  


Turning, both Harry and Tony spotted the source of the explosions on a nearby mountainside glimpsed over the remaining rooftops.

  


“I was wrong,” Tony admitted. “If you want to see hysterical, just turn on the news after this.”

  


Harry nodded in agreement. After all, he somehow doubted there would be a lot of calm reaction to the destruction of the famed Hollywood sign.

  


“Misdirection, huh?” Harry asked, looking at the remains of the armored terrorists that seemed to have been at least partially intended as a distraction while more of their number set up explosives behind the enormous and much beloved sign.

  


“We’ve got to get over there,” Tony declared, coughing again. “The goons who set those charges might still be there.”

  


Harry never got the chance to respond, though, because as Tony started to fire up the thrusters in his boots, he suddenly bent over hacking and coughing even harder.

  


_Oh no_ , Harry thought in horror, watching blood splatter across the rocks as Tony coughed wetly.

  


Pausing, Tony gasped for breath as he stared at that blood himself.

  


“Well, that’s not good,” he weakly observed before collapsing.

  


“Tony!” Harry yelled, reaching down and flipping the armored man over onto his back. Tony’s eyes were closed, and his rough breathing occasionally coated his lips with more drops of blood.

  


“Vitals,” Harry ordered Jo, his voice hoarse.

  


“His heartbeat is becoming increasingly irregular,” his VI informed him after scanning the unconscious billionaire. “I’m afraid he’s entering the final stages of his palladium poisoning.”

  


He swallowed. “And that is?” he finally asked, even though he knew the answer.

  


“Organ shutdown,” she quietly answered anyway.

  


Nodding jerkily, Harry reached out and gently rested his ghostly limb on top of Tony’s armored chest, filling himself with his power and making that limb glow brighter.

  


“Then I guess we’d better hope she got the designs up and running,” he said absently. “And that I figure out what the hell it’s still missing. Because at this point, I’m guessing that the only thing that’ll save Tony will be replacing the palladium in his reactor with an element that doesn’t currently exist on the periodic table.”

  


And on a day like today, what was just one more utterly impossible feat?

  


With a loud crack, Harry and Tony vanished from the ruined Hollywood boulevard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Thanks for your reviews. I’m glad to see so many of you enjoyed the previous chapter :) There’s actually something I meant to mention last time, but I completely forgot. You see, back in the early chapters of this story, a number of people (very aptly) pointed out that Harry didn’t really act like a kid his age—specifically, that he was far more competent and intelligent than any kid his age would reasonably be (i.e. surviving on the streets and becoming a high-class thief all before even reaching puberty), and that his mannerisms likewise weren’t very “childish.” However, this was actually fully intentional on my part. You see, as revealed in the last chapter, when Harry was very young (about five or so), the life memories of Voldemort started flooding his mind. While these memories were soon largely suppressed by his magic, this experience still left its mark on his young mind, which included forcing his mind to adapt to the experience by mentally maturing far beyond what would be reasonable for anyone his age. While this didn’t exactly make him an adult in a child’s body, it did affect his mannerisms and mental capabilities, making him far more mentally mature and intelligent than his peers. This is also something that helped contribute to him becoming a Stark-level genius even at such a young age.
> 
> So there you go. Not exactly a crucial detail, and one that would be kind of difficult or clunky to bring up or explain in-story, but it’s still one that I thought you might be interested in :)
> 
> Thanks for reading, and see you next time!


	10. Weird science

**Somewhere**

  


“ _Where the hell’d that come from?_ ” Tony’s voice echoed throughout the dark room.

  


The sound of metal scraping against stone sounded next, before a loud thrum of crackling energy blasted through a series of speakers.

  


This sound was followed by the tinkling of shattering glass, seemingly innocent and thoroughly out of place in this riot of destruction.

  


His face washed in the harsh blue light of the monitor, the Mandarin’s beastly black eyes were riveted to the footage, even as he delicately balanced a cup of tea in this long-nailed hands, allowing the curls of steam to fill his lungs with its soothing aroma.

  


After more asinine back and forth between the boy and his supposedly brilliant father, the teen demonstrated still more of his strange new abilities as he seemed to thrust a ghostly fist into the chest of the footage’s cameraman, transforming its remarkable power source into a worthless hunk of coal.

  


Still more chattering between the Starks came through the now crackling footage, but the Mandarin paid little attention, gently sipping his tea as he stared at the transmuted power source.

  


“ _Bomb!_ ” the teen’s alarmed voice suddenly intruded on his thoughts, leading to the Starks fleeing in their suits before the footage suddenly went dead, its source, one of his disciples, having dutifully destroyed himself rather than suffer capture and interrogation.

  


For several moments, the Mandarin simply sat there, staring at the static-filled screen as he sipped at his tea.

  


“Well,” he finally spoke, “you seem to be quite full of surprises, aren’t you, young Stark?”

  


Without turning from the screen, he gave a subtle gesture with his finger, and another of his dutiful acolytes rewound the footage yet again.

  


The Mandarin watched as the boy once more appeared on screen in his monstrous, writhing black form, by all appearances newly leashed and a monster no more.

  


“I quite enjoy surprises,” the Mandarin stated with a grin.

  


He continued to enjoy his tea as the monitors around him played countless pieces of footage revolving around his targets, most of which weren’t even taken by him.

  


It truly was a wondrous age they lived in.

  


* * *

  


**The hospital**

  


A loud crack announced the abrupt appearance of Harry and Tony in the pristine white hallways of the hospital, followed by copious screaming from the startled hospital workers around them.

  


Staggering, Harry shrugged off the disorientation that came from his newfound ability for teleportation as he knelt next to Tony’s unconscious form.

  


“Harry?!” Pepper asked in astonishment, forcing her way through the muttering crowd. “Tony!” Pepper started to rush forward, but paused as she seemed overwhelmed by everything she was seeing. First, there was Tony, wearing his red and gold armor as he lay unconscious on the floor with blood-stained lips. Then, there was Harry, a boy recently out of a coma and now kneeling in a battle-scarred silver suit of Iron Man armor. And finally, there was ghostly green limb extending from the missing arm of that very suit.

  


Pepper’s widened eyes couldn’t seem to figure out what to stare at first.

  


However, she was soon brushed aside by a black-haired woman wearing a crisp white doctor’s coat.

  


“What happened?” she asked Harry in crisp tones, kneeling next to Tony and trying to take his pulse.

  


“He collapsed,” Harry told her, his voice distant as he stared at nothing. “I think … I think it’s the palladium poisoning from his reactor.”

  


Pepper gave a gasp, covering her mouth with trembling fingers as she stared at Tony.

  


She knew what this meant.

  


“I need this armor off. I can’t treat him like this,” the doctor told him brusquely, still trying to wedge her fingers inside to check Tony’s pulse.

  


Unfortunately, that posed a bit of a problem, as the suit couldn’t really be removed without the complex assembly system back home.

  


However, as Harry thought this, a pulse of energy accidentally raced through the ghostly green hand still resting on Tony’s armor. With a snap, the entire suit, a masterwork of mechanical engineering, simply collapsed into sand, making both Harry and the doctor pull back with a start.

  


“Um … that will work,” the stunned doctor admitted, admirably shaking off her astonishment as she brushed piles of sand off the unconscious billionaire to examine him, barking orders at the orderlies and nurses standing around them all the while.

  


Meanwhile, Harry staggered back to his feet, staring at his ghostly green hand that had just channeled his magic in a useful but completely unintentional way, once again highlighting just how much harder it was to control his power here than it was back in the astral plane.

  


Pausing, he gained a thoughtful look on his face as the orderlies finished clearing the sand off Tony and shifted him onto a gurney. One of them removed Tony’s watch to clear his wrist for an IV, gasping as Tony’s holographic disguise was broken, once more revealing his ghastly, black-veined complexion to the world.

  


Harry’s eyes hardened at the sight.

  


“Natalie?” he heard Pepper remark in surprise. Turning, he watched the redheaded woman gracefully step past Pepper and between the hospital workers milling around Tony. “Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you.”

  


Natalie declined to answer, instead stepping forward and jamming a needle into Tony’s neck in a single swift movement.

  


“What are you doing?!” the doctor demanded, pushing Natalie away just as she pulled the syringe out of Tony’s neck.

  


“Lithium dioxide,” Natalie explained calmly. “Mr. Stark asked me to collect it from his home before he left. It should help to abate his symptoms.”

  


As one, everybody gathered seemed to turn back to the unconscious billionaire, watching as before their eyes, many of those blackened veins lightened and color returned to Tony’s cheeks as his breathing eased.

  


He still looked terrible, but he now looked slightly less like he was on his deathbed.

  


Pepper clasped Natalie’s hand and thanked her, looking at Tony with hope in her eyes.

  


Harry, on the other hand, stared at Natalie in hard-eyed suspicion.

  


“Alright, you know what? I’ve had enough of this,” he harshly declared, elbowing through the crowd to grab Natalie’s arm in his armored gauntlet. With a flare of his power, he was once more surrounded by the feel of being forced through a tight rubber tube as he teleported, reappearing in the workshop back home, the enigmatic “Natalie Rushman” in tow.

  


Natalie fell to the floor, clearly disoriented by the harsh experience. However, in an impressive display of reflexes and self-control, she immediately rolled back to her feet, instinctually ending in a crouched, combat-ready position.

  


Only to find herself staring down the glowing repulsor of Harry’s gauntlet.

  


“I’ve had enough,” he repeated, glaring at the woman. “First, you ghost yourself onto our systems mere _days_ before someone shows up in Monaco with the designs for Tony’s armor.” At least, so he suspected she had. “Then, we find some lunatic out there apparently knows all of our deepest, darkest secrets, _again_ just days after you showed up out of nowhere. And now, you conveniently pull some miracle treatment for Tony out of thin air, despite the fact that neither I _nor Tony_ ever knew anything about it! _Who are you?!_ ”

  


Natalie opened her mouth, a nervous expression on her perfect face, only to cut off as Harry suddenly charged up the repulsor with a whine.

  


“Before you try lying,” he warned her, eyes narrowed, “you should know that I’m in a _really_ bad fucking mood. Tony’s back there dying, and I may only have a few hours to figure out the impossible if I want to save him. So I don’t have time to play games. Lie to me, and I will kill you and teleport your body to the middle of the fucking ocean where no one will ever find you. Understand?”

  


Slowly, Natalie stood up straight, her false nervous expression bleeding away as if it had never been.

  


“You know … it’s easy to threaten to kill someone. It’s a lot harder to carry it out,” she said quietly, staring deep into his eyes.

  


His eyes darkened with memories. “I just killed two people today,” he said, just as quietly. “The first lives I’ve ever taken as _Harry_ , and not the mindless creature you all met back at the hearing. But I didn’t hesitate, because they were trying to kill me and Tony. And I don’t regret it, because I know they would have gone on to kill even more people if I hadn’t stopped them.” Drifting out of memory, he glared more intensely at Natalie. “So believe me when I tell you that if you’re responsible for all of this happening, I will drop you right here and now, and then I will never give you a second thought again.”

  


A small, almost pitying smile spread across her lips. “Is that what you think?” she asked him, her voice somber. “Let me give you some advice, kid: knowing you were justified in taking someone’s life is one thing, but it’s a whole different animal to forget their faces.”

  


Unbidden, his mind flashed with the faces of all the people he had seen killed by Voldemort, all the people he had _felt_ himself kill before he destroyed the rest of those horrific memories.

  


Sparks danced across the surface of his gauntlet as he charged the repulsor past its safety limits.

  


“ _Who … are … you?_ ” he growled one last time.

  


With those words, the final mask left her face, leaving only cool professionalism.

  


“My name is Natasha Romanov. I’m an agent of SHIELD,” she told him, her words clipped and dispassionate.

  


A thrill of alarm raced through Harry’s spine upon hearing them.

  


“I was assigned to monitor you and Tony, and to assess your suitability for assisting SHIELD in certain projects we have in mind,” she continued, somewhat vaguely.

  


“And the Mandarin?” he asked, gritting his teeth. “Is he just one of your tests?”

  


“No,” she answered curtly. “The Mandarin was an unintended variable.”

  


“Then how does he know so much about us?” Harry demanded.

  


“Probably the same way SHIELD does,” she stated with a shrug. “Paying attention and adding two and two together.” A light smirk ghosted its way across her lips. “Frankly, neither you nor Tony are as good at keeping secrets as you think you are, _Spectre_.”

  


He drew back slightly at that, which her sharp eyes clearly caught.

  


“You’re good, I’ll admit,” she complimented. “You were damn thorough in covering your tracks, never leaving any witnesses, footage, or DNA, and your methods were as unpredictable as they were successful.” Her smirk deepened as an expression of something like respect glittered in her eyes. “Hacking SHIELD databases and getting away without a trace isn’t exactly a boast many could make, after all. Especially not before they even hit puberty.”

  


His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth to prevent his instinct to blithely respond that he only did it once.

  


The glint in her eye said she wasn’t fooled, though she simply continued. “But eventually, even you couldn’t really hide the fact that a number of ‘Spectre’ thefts occurred in the same cities that also experienced unexplained disturbances featuring ‘dark winds’, a ‘black mass with shining white eyes’, or ‘giant killer dust bunnies’.” He felt a flash of indignation at that last descriptor, but he said nothing. “And then, all Spectre crimes mysteriously come to a halt the same night that Stark Labs becomes the epicenter to an ‘atmospheric disturbance’ that seems suspiciously similar to previous reports of that same dark creature.” Her eyes bored into his. “And out of nowhere, that very same night, Tony goes full Daddy Warbucks and takes in a young boy off the streets.”

  


“Okay, you did _not_ just compare me to Annie,” Harry cut in indignantly, able to hold his tongue no longer.

  


She gave a throaty chuckle at his response. “The point is, we at SHIELD have known about you for a while, Harry. We’ve even thrown out some false leads to try and keep others off your scent. General Thaddeus Ross in particular has been chomping at the bit to get his hands on you after the unfortunate footage of your alter ego at the hearing, even without linking you to the ‘Spectre’, though we’ve managed to keep him at bay. But unfortunately, those breadcrumbs to your past were still there for those diligent and patient enough to look for them, which it would appear that the Mandarin is.”

  


The muscle in Harry’s cheek twitched as he clenched and unclenched his jaw, but what she said made sense. “And Tony’s condition? How did the Mandarin know about that?” he asked next, still eyeing her suspiciously.

  


“Before his death, Ivan Vanko appears to have spent quite some time working with the Mandarin,” Natasha explained. “SHIELD did some checking after the events in Monaco. From what we could gather, Vanko was abducted from his home somewhere around four years ago, presumably by the Mandarin’s ‘disciples’. Since Vanko seemed to have been capable of building his own miniaturized arc reactors, it’s very likely that he would have understood the device well enough to know what would happen if someone kept one embedded in his chest for years on end. And if he had really been in the Mandarin’s clutches for over four years before Monaco, then it is also very likely that he would have shared that knowledge at some point. From there, all the Mandarin would have to do was use the fact that Tony Stark isn’t exactly shy around the camera and yet didn’t exhibit any of the visible symptoms that he should have in order for the Mandarin to realize that Tony was probably hiding his condition in some way, and given who Tony is and what he does, he wouldn’t exactly be relying on makeup to pull that off. Add in the fact that all the footage of Tony from a certain point onward features him wearing the same particularly advanced-looking watch instead of buying a new one after a single wearing like he always used to, and it wouldn’t be too difficult for the Mandarin to eventually pinpoint the probable source for how Tony was hiding his condition, especially with a tech expert like Vanko whispering in his ear.”

  


He stared at her. “You’ve given this some thought,” he remarked.

  


“The Mandarin appears to think like SHIELD does,” she explained. “He’s smart, patient, and absolutely thorough in his attention to detail. That type of mindset is key in our line of work—it keeps your ass alive in the field—but he seems to be putting it to terrible but effective use in his own.”

  


“Or in other words, Tony and I have a somewhat crazier than normal stalker on our tails,” Harry rephrased things, reluctantly powering down his repulsor and lowering his gauntlet.

  


“So it would seem,” Natasha agreed with a faint curve to her cupid’s bow lips. “So what are you planning to do about it?”

  


“For now? Nothing,” he told her. “I’ve got bigger fish to fry. Like inventing a new element in order to save Tony’s ass. But eventually? … I think I might try violence.”

  


“Always a good start,” Natasha agreed, mirth reaching her eyes.

  


“Glad you approve,” he blandly remarked, once more building his power in preparation for teleporting. “I don’t suppose SHIELD has anything else that can help besides their little miracle drug and their remarkable talent for sitting on their asses?”

  


“Not really, no,” Natasha answered blithely.

  


“Figures,” he muttered, focusing on his destination.

  


“Oh, and Harry?” she added just before he vanished. “Don’t think I’m going to be holding back on you in our training sessions just because of your little arm issue.” He looked down at his ghostly hand before turning back to her in surprise. “After all, SHIELD agents do have _some_ other talents beyond ‘sitting on their asses’. And I’d very much like to show them to you. Especially since Tony’s already paying me to do so.”

  


Her slow smile cast a disturbing counterpoint to the vicious glint in her eyes, suddenly making Harry welcome the comparatively comforting embrace of searing pressure he felt when teleporting. Even if this time, it squeezed harder and surrounded him for far longer as he traveled.

  


His arrival in the enormous warehouse laboratory was followed by a loud crack of displaced air, followed by a metallic clang and a pained yelp. Stepping around one of the countless bulky machines littering the floor space of their lab, he spotted a bleary red eye glaring at him through a tangled mat of brown hair as his fellow lab owner poked her head over the device she had been working on.

  


“Is there any particular reason why you’re suddenly too good to use our perfectly serviceable and _quiet_ teleportation tech?” she asked irritably, rubbing her scalp.

  


“You said it yourself: I’m just too good for that stuff now,” he answered in a falsely magnanimous tone. “Well, _that_ , and I wanted to see if this new ability worked for traveling cross-country,” he explained more seriously.

  


“And?” she asked, curious.

  


“And it does. I managed to travel from southern California to upstate New York without any real difficulty,” he said, stepping over and examining the device she was working on. “Strangely, though, I experienced more time during the travel than I did when making shorter teleportation jumps, which to me says that I’m traveling through _some_ kind of space, even if it isn’t the same physical space I’d be traveling by foot.” Pausing, he closed his eyes and shook his head, forcibly derailing his inquisitive mind from the strange phenomena of his new powers. “But that’s something to look into later. How’s the device?”

  


“Yeah, how about you instead tell me about the freaky ghost arm sticking out the broken sleeve of your suit,” she suggested, staring fixedly at his new astral limb.

  


“What? You’ve never heard of phantom limb before?” he asked with a grin, wiggling the semi-transparent fingers at her.

  


“You mean the condition where someone loses a limb, and they still feel like it’s there?” she asked, raising her eyebrows. “Because I think you might be taking that to a whole different level with that thing.”

  


“Meh. I’ve always been an overachiever,” he replied with a careless shrug, reaching up and disconnecting the helmet of his borrowed armor and setting it down on a nearby table.

  


Rolling her eyes, she returned to work, unable to find it in her at the moment to deal with or even really question the madness that was Harry Stark’s very unique life.

  


“So how’s our new baby?” he asked, eyeing the already pretty well assembled device.

  


“You mean the miniaturized particle accelerator I’ve had to jury rig in only a few hours?” she asked in some amount of anxiety and annoyance, her oil-smeared cheeks and tangled hair doing wonders to portray a girl on the verge of a breakdown as she stared at the immense metal coil. “Well, assuming it doesn’t explode and kill us both, it might work once I finish up here.” Picking up her tools, she glared at him as she crouched down to resume work. “Have I mentioned how much I hated working with these things in our other experiments?” she asked.

  


“About once or twice a month since we scrapped them,” he answered, collecting tools of his own from a nearby workbench. However, he was temporarily slowed in these efforts by his ghostly hand simply passing through the tools and table as if it wasn’t even there, forcing him to gather them all one-handed while staring at his incorporeal limb in vexation.

  


“And for good reason!” she called out to him in between muttered cursing. “Do you have any idea how dangerous these things are?”

  


“I have a notion,” he answered, stripping a nearby machine with swift, deft movements, surgically removing the components he needed and leaving the rest, his use of only his left hand slowing him down, but not by much. “But if you have any other ideas for how to synthesize a completely new element, I am all ears over here.” With careless disinterest, he tossed the remains of the cannibalized device over his shoulder to crash against the concrete floor. His miniature horde of reclaimed parts, by contrast, he treated with delicate care.

  


“But you said yourself that the machine wouldn’t work,” she reminded him, suddenly yelping as she accidentally scorched one of her fingers when the part she was working on started sparking. “And I pieced together more of what your notes were saying while you were gone. From what I can tell, even if it works perfectly and _doesn’t_ kill us all, this thing will only be able be able to synthesize small amounts of the element that will only last for a few _seconds_ before falling apart again. And unless I was missing something in your notes, you also haven’t seemed to have figured out the exact atomic structure you need for the pre-sample of the element that we’re going to be smashing this high-powered ion beam into to create this new miracle element of yours.”

  


Harry turned and looked at the conspicuously empty pedestal in the center of the open area encircled by the accelerator. That pedestal would hold the pre-sample of the element, which the particle accelerator would bombard with a stream of laser-focused plasma to transform it into the final element.

  


That pre-sample was the key. It had to have just the right atomic structure for things to fall properly into place when the stream of subatomic particles was smashed into it by the accelerator. Otherwise, all he’d end up with was a pile of radioactive goop instead of a new, stable element that could replace the palladium in the reactor.

  


And unfortunately, that pre-sample was one of the parts of this whole thing that he’d never quite been able to figure out.

  


“Like I said,” he answered her, turning back to what he was building, “there are still a few kinks to smooth out.”

  


She poked her head over the accelerator to point out that these were a lot more than just kinks, only to find herself distracted by what he was building. “What are you doing?” she asked instead.

  


He didn’t answer right away, continuing to one-handedly build what was starting to look like a dentist chair from some hellish sci-fi future, lit with the harsh blue glow of several reactors he was hooking into the thing with quick, precise movements.

  


“You know that coma I was just in?” he finally responded, still not looking up from the disturbing mass of metal cables and wires.

  


“I vaguely recall it, yes,” she answered, eyes darkening as she remembered staring at him in that hospital bed, uncertain if he would ever wake up, or be the same if he did.

  


Unfortunately for her stress levels, it seemed that he was.

  


“Well, I wasn’t just sleeping,” he told her, unthinkingly reaching for a part with his ghostly right hand, only to find the metal device was left with the consistency of rubber after his hand accidentally released a burst of his uncontrollable power into it. With a sound of annoyed disgust, he grabbed the now worthless junk and chucked it over his shoulder with his left hand, reaching more carefully for another part to take its place. “I was in some kind of … alternate state of being,” he continued explaining, “in some place called the astral plane.”

  


“Astral plane? As in Yanni CDs and incense and cheap New Agey crystals, astral plane?” she asked, somewhat incredulous and more than a little judgy.

  


“Well, it wasn’t exactly advertised like that, but essentially,” he responded, soldering a connection in the haphazard device he was building. “But while I was there, I was able to explore my own subconscious, and part of that was encountering tech that I’ve never consciously designed, but have apparently been mulling over in the back of my head without realizing.” Pulling the tool away, he gently blew on the soldered area. “And one of those designs included an arc reactor that I think might have been made of the element we’re trying to create.”

  


Her eyes widened. “So you’re saying …”

  


“I need to go back there,” he answered succinctly, connecting wires and starting up the device with a whine. “I keep feeling like the answers I need are just on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t quite grasp them. Not consciously, at least. But I may have already figured some of this out subconsciously. And if I can get my stupidly slow conscious mind to access it …”

  


Suddenly, she started eyeing the device more trepidatiously. “Harry …,” she began slowly, “what exactly is this thing?”

  


He paused in his work to study the device. “A chair,” he answered evasively.

  


“You’re recreating the event that sent you into this ‘astral plane’ in the first place, aren’t you?” she whispered in horror.

  


“Oh, God no!” he assured her. “There are no psychos in armored suits standing around this time. See? Totally different. Not recreated at all.”

  


“I see _one_ psycho in an armored suit,” she pointed out. “Seriously, Harry, are you out of your mind?! You want to put yourself back in a coma only a few hours after climbing out of one?!”

  


By her tone, she evidently thought this was both ludicrous and deeply concerning.

  


“Look, I’m not actually blowing myself up this time,” he assured her, flipping a few switches on the improvised machine, and giving it a kick when some loose connections briefly made it start powering down. “But overvolting my body with arc reactor energy managed to knock my astral form out of my physical form last time.” He neglected to mention how it had also fractured his psyche. “If I can harness that in a more controlled and less explody way, then this should work to send me back there.”

  


“This is what you call controlled?” she asked, watching as he pounded on the device with his fist to keep it from dying, the scrapped-together machine clearly suffering from its hasty workmanship.

  


“Relatively,” he answered, tightening the last connections on a headband trailing with wires. “Look, I don’t have time for safety. So you can either help me, or force me to do this all on my own. Your call.”

  


For a moment, she simply glared at him. “You know, I really hate it when you do that,” she told him, stepping forward and helping with the final connections.

  


“I know. I’m okay with that,” he replied, grinning at her as he wormed his way between the cables and wires to situate himself in the seat.

  


Her glare was unmollified as she helped to fix the headband around his temples.

  


“C’mon, would you lighten up?” he goaded her. “You’re a part of a mad science experiment! Where’s the excitement? The _mania_? The mad cackling and peals of thunder?!”

  


Without a word, she simply reached down and flicked his ear.

  


_Hard_.

  


“Alright, where’s the stupid lever for this thing?” she asked as he rubbed his ear and shot her a piteous look.

  


“Over there,” he told her, nodding off to the side.

  


Turning, she spotted a heavy-duty power cord trailing from the device to a power switch.

  


Which was placed several dozen meters away from the device it activated.

  


“And why, exactly, do you want me that far away when I throw the switch?” she asked, eyes narrowed suspiciously.

  


“No reason at all,” he answered with a distinct lack of eye contact.

  


Glaring, she stomped over to the switch, clearly set so far away in order to protect her against the device malfunctioning and exploding, which Harry evidently saw as a distinct possibility, even if he wasn’t admitting it.

  


As she stood there cradling the switch, though, her irate expression faded, leaving only concern.

  


“Are you sure about this, Harry?” she asked softly.

  


His expression likewise grew somber. “It’s Tony,” he told her. “And this may be my only chance to save him.”

  


Reluctantly, she gave a slow nod and prepared to throw the switch.

  


“Do it,” he gently told her when she hesitated.

  


Gritting her teeth, she did.

  


With an ominous whine, the machine powered up, and then bombarded Harry’s body with a thunderous crackle of energy.

  


Harry seized in the chair, gritting his teeth so hard he was in danger of cracking a tooth as he fought the impulse to scream, the waves of energy burning his body as they coursed through him. As a strangled groan escaped his throat, he tried willing his astral form to leave his body, tried forcing it out, even. His clenched eyelids were bombarded with a harsh green light as his spectral arm grew blinding from the energy overload, but he still couldn’t separate his astral and physical forms.

  


Unwilling screams filled the lab as his body continued to be wracked with the searing waves of energy, drowning out the panicked shouts coming from his friend.

  


However, they didn’t quite drown out the high-pitched whine coming from the hastily jury-rigged device as it started to fail.

  


Without further warning, it exploded with a thundering boom, crumbled pieces of metal rocketing through the air backed by violent waves of sapphire energy, turning Harry’s world white as the explosion tore him free from the chair.

  


It took several moments for Harry’s overwhelmed senses to start slowly returning. The first to come back was sound, an almost musical ringing echoing in his ears. The second was touch, his cheek registering the feel of cold concrete beneath his face. The third was taste, his tongue registering something that tasted like … coconut and metal?

  


Groaning, he slowly raised himself to his knees, his dizzy brain registering sight once again as it showed him the simple gray concrete floor of the warehouse the two of them had commandeered and turned into their own secret lab all those years ago. However, he kept shaking his head and blinking his eyes to try and clear them, as this time, the dull gray concrete seemed to carry a light green hue to it, which didn’t make sense. Looking up, though, Harry saw that same faint emerald hue pervaded the entire warehouse, as if he was looking at the world through a camera with a light green filter on it.

  


On top of that, everything he looked at seemed … _thin_ , somehow, as if it wasn’t fully there. It was difficult to process. It was almost like, even though by all rational measures, everything looked exactly the same, albeit slightly green tinged, it still seemed more like looking at pictures of the things rather than looking at the things themselves.

  


It kind of made his head spin a little.

  


Standing, Harry next registered that he didn’t feel any pain from the blast, which was … confusing, to say the least. However, when he turned around, that confusion took a firm back seat to the pure astonishment he felt next.

  


The astral projection chair was still exploding, bits and pieces being torn free as they rode waves of torrential blue energy. However, they did so _slowly_ , like they were moving through molasses. Turning, he also saw his friend, face horrified as she was caught near frozen in mid-sprint towards the chair, moving so slowly she might as well not have been.

  


“So, the astral plane comes with some serious time dilation,” Harry remarked, staring in interest at the slowed down world around him. “Cool.”

  


However, what he didn’t see was what made him truly uncomfortable.

  


Specifically, he didn’t see an unconscious physical body that he should have left behind. Looking down, though, he noted that his body did emit a faint emerald sheen, but unlike the last time he was here, his form didn’t seem to be made of transparent green light, except for his arm.

  


“Am I … _physically_ in the astral plane?” he asked in surprise. “Because that doesn’t sound healthy _at all_.”

  


However, healthy or not, that seemed to be what he was dealing with at the moment, given the clearly physical body he still possessed.

  


“Wonderful,” he groused. “Okay, first things first, get what I came for. Deal with all this other crap later,” he prioritized, deciding to just roll with things for the moment.

  


Frowning, he noticed that he still heard that persistent musical chime ringing in his ears, too. However, he simply shoved that aside along with everything else as he focused his mind on the advanced suit of silver armor he had encountered the last time he was there, embracing his power to give that thought weight.

  


Releasing his power, and relishing how much more responsive and controlled it was here, he watched as the air in front of him rippled, revealing the very suit he came here to study.

  


Curiously, it seemed subtly different than it had last time, which he assumed was the result of reflecting his ever-changing subconscious ideas and designs. However, his eyes were truly on one thing and one thing only.

  


The reactor.

  


Glowing more brightly than the standard arc reactor Harry was used to, this new reactor was situated in a triangular opening in the armor’s chest as opposed to the circular housing unit that Tony’s armors used.

  


Reaching out, Harry’s ghostly hand easily phased through the chest of the armor to cup the advanced power source, gently pulling it free like picking an apple from a tree. For several moments, Harry stared at the miniature sun floating above his spectral hand, until he gently squeezed his ghostly fingers, crushing the reactor in a soft burst of light.

  


“Of course,” he whispered as his mind flashed with knowledge, his subconscious ruminations on the reactor’s elemental composition flooding through his conscious mind. Like finally coming up with a word that had been dancing on the tip of his tongue for hours, the final pieces of the puzzle clicked into place, giving him the answer that a part of him had already possessed.

  


It wasn’t perfect, of course. He didn’t immediately understand all the steps he’d need to make it work, but he understood exactly what the composition of the new element needed to be, and what he needed the pre-sample to be for the accelerator to change it into that new element.

  


The only problem was, he still didn’t know how to physically craft that pre-sample in the first place.

  


Frowning, he idly passed his ghostly right hand through the suit of armor in front of him as he pondered the issue, watching as it collapsed into a soft burst of light that flooded his conscious mind with the knowledge of its design.

  


He barely noticed, though. His mind was on the issue of how to synthesize this element in order to save Tony’s life.

  


However, as he paced back and forth, ruminating on the riddle of how to synthesize an element that seemingly couldn’t be synthesized, he found himself growing more and more annoyed by the pervasive hum he had been hearing ever since coming here, until finally, he just couldn’t take it anymore.

  


His head on a swivel, he started walking around the lab, casually passing through the various machines that littered the floor space as he hunted the source of the chime. As he walked, the sound grew faintly louder as he came closer and closer to its epicenter, but all of a sudden, as he kept walking, it started to grow quieter once again.

  


Pausing, he turned around and headed back the way he had come, carefully listening to the musical hum. Eventually, he found himself standing just where the chime seemed to be loudest, but there was nothing there. Just an empty stretch of concrete, and that damn pervasive hum.

  


“Is it under the floor?” he wondered aloud, staring at the concrete. “I wonder … I can walk through things here, so can I get down theeeeEEEE!”

  


Just as he thought about it, he passed through the floor as if it wasn’t even there, falling through vast stretches of concrete and steel before finally passing into some kind of dark room hidden deep under the floor of their lab.

  


Thankfully, this strange world seemed to recognize his desire to stop, and he landed painfully on the floor of the room without passing through it.

  


Cursing under his breath, he once more clambered to his armored feet with the sound of metal scraping on stone. However, his curses died as he got a good look at the only source of light in this strange room, and the apparent source of the constant chime that had been haunting him.

  


Front and center in the room, set within a heavy metal column reaching from the floor all the way to the ceiling, was a glass tube filled with some strange, dark metal threaded with glowing blue light. Even more curiously, though, the faint sense of thinness he got from everything else, making whatever he looked at seem like just faint echoes of the real thing, wasn’t present in the odd dark metal. Instead, the metal gave off the distinct impression of _substance_ , like it was just as physically present in this plane as his own very physical body was.

  


As for what this strange metal was, well, the photos on a nearby table, most of which revolved around a rather famous artifact from America’s history, gave a pretty decent clue.

  


“ _Holy shit!_ ” he breathed in astonishment, scanning the workbench covered in notes and data on tensile strength, unusual properties, and potential applications before turning back to the source of all this study. “I guess this place was a hell of a lot more than just an abandoned storage facility of yours, wasn’t it, grandpa?”

  


Years ago, shortly after Tony had taken him in, he had gone trawling through old records on the designs and experiments undertaken by his adoptive father’s father, the late great Howard Stark, his own young but utterly ravenous mind constantly driving him to learn everything he could wherever he could find it. In the process, though, he had stumbled across a passing mention of an old, near abandoned warehouse in upstate New York. Upon investigating, he had found the place filled with forgotten tech, most of it old and outdated. But of far greater interest to him was the simple fact of this huge space just sitting there, long forgotten by the outside world. To him, this place offered incredible potential for him and his friend to continue their constant experiments unseen and undisturbed, in a space they could truly call their own.

  


Within a day, he had contacted her about his new find, and a month later, they had cleared out the last of the rubbish and started work on the first of many devices that had since filled the cavernous building. And they had been freely using the forgotten warehouse ever since.

  


But in all that time, they had never once suspected that Howard Stark had used this space as anything more than a storage facility, or that this unbelievable treasure had been buried underneath, hidden from the world.

  


“ _Vibranium_ ,” he whispered, staring at the glowing, singing metal sealed away behind a glass case. He snorted. “I guess you didn’t use up all you had making Captain America’s shield after all, did you?” he remarked, eyeing the countless photos of said shield, scribbled with endless notations on its incredible durability and other unusual traits.

  


It made sense, now that he thought about it, though. Scientist that he was, of course Howard Stark would never take the world’s sole sample of this one-of-a-kind metal and turn the entire thing into a prototype shield for a man who, at the time, was still little more than a living publicity stunt, and hadn’t yet become the renowned hero the world would later come to know him as. What Howard Stark _would_ have done, though, was hold some of the remarkable metal back in order to study it, all the while claiming to the world that he had used up all he had in crafting the legendary shield. Otherwise, he would have ended up being hounded by constant attempts to steal the invaluable metal from him.

  


And where better to hide this priceless treasure than in a secret vault hidden underneath some insignificant storage facility that never held anything more valuable than old plane parts, making it the last place in the world anyone would expect to find such a prize?

  


As Harry looked on at this unbelievable find, only one word summed up his feelings on the matter.

  


“Dibs!”

  


And so, completely forgetting that he was in the astral plane, and thus that nothing around him had physical form, he reached out and grabbed the sample of invaluable, singing metal.

  


Things didn’t work out as he had expected.

  


For one thing, his hands both passed through the glass case around the metal as if it wasn’t there. Understandable, since it technically wasn’t. He may be able to mimic the sense of physical touch here, such as he did when walking, but everything around him was more a reflection of the object rather than the object itself. As such, it was somewhat surprising when his metal-covered left hand successfully clasped the dark metal set inside the case.

  


It was even more surprising when his ghostly right hand did as well.

  


He stared as, for the first time, he registered the sense of touch with the ephemeral limb, watching as it reached through the glass and somehow closed around the glowing metal, registering an inexplicable sense of heft and warmth from the metal.

  


For several moments, he simply relished the sensation of sensation itself in his missing hand, tracing the metal with his ephemeral fingertips, and feeling its warm, smooth contours beneath his touch.

  


But then he tried pulling it free.

  


“Tried” being the operative word.

  


Frowning, he glared at the stubbornly immovable metal clutched in his ghostly green fist.

  


Once again, he tried tugging it free, but to no effect.

  


Bracing his feet, he pulled even harder, feeling his ephemeral fingers almost bruise as they yanked at the unmoving vibranium, leading him to reflexively push more of his power into said limb.

  


Like flipping a switch, the strange blue light threaded throughout the dark metal turned green, and the sample of metal pulled free, passing through the glass case as Harry fell to the floor, suddenly nauseous and suffering a severe case of vertigo.

  


For several seconds, Harry simply lay there, trying to understand why everything felt so fundamentally different all of a sudden. However, several details quickly made themselves known to him. For one thing, the constant musical chime emitted by the metal still clutched in his ghostly right hand had suddenly silenced. For another, everything around him had lost its green tinge, and no longer appeared thin or less than fully there.

  


He quickly deduced that this meant he was somehow no longer in the astral plane.

  


Just as this thought occurred to him, though, the room was suddenly flooded with flashing red lights and the blaring klaxon sound of an alarm.

  


Evidently, Howard Stark hadn’t been content to hide his sole sample of vibranium in a secret vault. He had also hooked the thing to an extensive security system.

  


“ _Intruder alert!_ ” a woman’s smooth voice blared through speakers in the room. “ _Self-destruct sequence initiated!_ ”

  


That was not a sound he was happy to hear. Nor was the sound of additional heavy locks engaging in the metal door on the other side of the room, intended to trap any intruders inside, presumably unless they input the “please don’t kill me” code in the panel next to the door in time.

  


Unfortunately, this was a code he didn’t have.

  


“ _T-minus 10 … 9 … 8 …_ ”

  


Hastily, Harry gathered his power, focusing on the upstairs lab. However, his eyes widened in horror as he remembered all the notes on the nearby bench, utterly invaluable to him if he wanted to unlock the potential of this one-of-a-kind metal, and all of which were about to be destroyed in a fiery inferno.

  


“… _5 … 4 …_ ”

  


Without thinking, he reached out to them with the hand holding the sample of metal, wishing he had time to grab them. To his astonishment, however, his power instinctually raced through his astral limb and into the green-glowing metal, and the countless papers and folders suddenly raced into the air, surrounding him like a sand dervish.

  


“… _2 … 1 …_ ”

  


No time to think, he teleported, appearing upstairs just as the floor beneath his feet shook from the explosion destroying the secret room deep underground.

  


To his stunned delight, though, he also watched the countless notes, photographs, and folders fall to the ground around him, his magic having successfully taken them along for the ride.

  


Grinning, he pointed the chunk of metal at them as he embraced his power, watching as they all floated into the air and neatly stacked themselves on a nearby desk.

  


He gave a delighted laugh as he flipped the twenty-or-so-pound chunk of vibranium in the air, catching it again with his ghostly green hand. From what he could tell, this metal may hold the answers to helping him gain control of his magic, maybe even allow him to use it just as well as he had back on the astral plane. And he was more than a little excited to test that further.

  


More importantly at the moment, though, it may also hold the answer to a slightly more pressing issue.

  


He was soon distracted from these thoughts by the sound of another small explosion coming from somewhere deeper in the lab, making him take off running with a start.

  


After all, he just remembered that a certain someone would probably be interested to know that he hadn’t gotten vaporized in the exploding astral projector.

  


Clearing yet another of their large machines, he found the girl in question standing over the wreckage of the astral projector chair that may have, by some standards, been less than professionally put together. Just then, however, her head whipped to the side to spot him, astonished eyes turning from him to the recently blown-up chair she had last seen him in mere seconds ago, and back to him.

  


“See? I _told you_ that experiment was too dangerous!” he couldn’t help but goad her.

  


By her narrowed eyes, this was a less than wise move on his part.

  


Thankfully, as the enraged girl charged at him, he had a few options to keep himself safe.

  


“Get back here!” she hollered as he kept teleporting to the top of the giant machines around them, keeping himself safely out of her reach.

  


“No! You’re going to hit me!” he called back, continuing his tactical retreat.

  


“Of course I am! You keep blowing your stupid ass up!” she yelled, chasing after him.

  


“Hey, it worked, didn’t it?” he retorted, holding up the chunk of dark metal, still glowing with green cords of light.

  


“I don’t care! Do you have any idea the kind of stress you’re putting me under?!” she yelled back, somewhat irrationally, but also a bit justifiably.

  


“Wait, what is that thing?” she asked suddenly, finally registering the strange-looking metal in his hand.

  


“Vibranium,” he told her proudly, hefting the decent-sized chunk of metal.

  


That gave her pause. “Where on earth did you get that?”

  


“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you as we finish up the accelerator,” he replied. “But first, can you promise to stop attacking me until we’re through with all this?”

  


She gave him a considering look. “Can you promise not to blow yourself up again for at least a month?” she asked.

  


He hesitated. “I might be able to give you a week,” he countered.

  


“Three weeks,” she rebutted.

  


“One and a half weeks, and a promise not to strap myself to any machine that was assembled in less than five minutes ever again,” he counter-offered.

  


“Make that two and a half weeks, and I won’t attack you even when we finish up here,” she answered.

  


“Done!” he exclaimed happily, shaking her left hand with his own. “Now let’s go. We’re running out of time.”

  


* * *

  


“So all this time, this grimy old warehouse was actually a front for Howard Stark’s secret vault for the most valuable metal known to humankind, and we had no idea?” she asked, hooking an arc reactor into the accelerator to power it. “Well that’s embarrassing.”

  


“I know, right? I can’t believe neither of us ever found out about it,” he said, carefully placing the crystalline reflectors in the accelerator.

  


“No, I meant embarrassing for you,” she corrected him, prompting him to look at her in confusion. “I mean, you used to be this big-time thief, and for all these years, you’ve been standing on the biggest treasure trove anyone’s ever seen, and you had no idea?” She snickered at him. “Somebody’s losing his touch.”

  


“… Hilarious,” he informed her.

  


By her continued giggling, she certainly seemed to think so, at least.

  


Rolling his eyes, he simply walked over and carefully grabbed a sample of palladium crafted into a triangular ring and delicately placed it into the receptacle on the center pedestal.

  


“Are you sure this is going to work?” she asked him uncertainly as they started finishing up the last of their preparations.

  


“Oh, God no,” he told her. “But I’m also not sure it _won’t_ work!”

  


She stared at him. “Well, at least there’s that,” she responded dryly.

  


“That’s the spirit!” he gleefully replied, taking up his position next to the pedestal as she moved over to the power switch. “Now … throw the switch, Igor!” he yelled with a mad scientist cackle.

  


“… What did you just call me?” she asked, a dangerous look in her eyes.

  


“Uh … pull the lever, Kronk?” he suggested next.

  


“I will kill you,” she threatened, evidently not pleased with these comparisons.

  


“Ugh. Fine! Just push the stupid button, Sally No-Fun,” he pouted.

  


With a final threatening glare, she did so. “Initializing power sequence,” she called out as the accelerator started to power up with a loud, low hum. Mirroring the device, Harry focused on gathering his own power, drawing on his magic and letting it build inside him like a swelling tide, making his ghostly right arm glow brighter and brighter.

  


“Almost at maximum power!” she called out, standing by the final switch as the accelerator’s hum reached such a low pitch it made their teeth vibrate in their skulls. Meanwhile, Harry cleared his mind, focusing the entirety of his being on one thing and one thing only as he hefted the piece of vibranium in his brilliantly glowing hand.

  


“Now!” he called out, hearing the accelerator’s hum reach a crescendo.

  


Throwing the final switch, she released the built-up stream of ions, the accelerator firing a narrow blue particle laser directly at the triangular sample of palladium.

  


At the same time, Harry released his own power, enveloping that sample in a brilliant green glow.

  


By all traditional science, the element he needed to create simply couldn’t be synthesized with existing technology. The pre-sample couldn’t be made, and the final element wouldn’t last more than a few seconds even if it could. But he had far more than just science on his side. And with the vibranium in his hand granting him unprecedented control over his magic, he enveloped the palladium in his power, transforming it just as the stream of ions from the accelerator did, the two naturally opposing forces combining to achieve the impossible, and to form something entirely new.

  


He squinted as the light grew blinding, even with the heavy black goggles he wore. But he didn’t let up, continuing to flood the sample with his magic, transforming it even as the condensed stream of particles crashed into it from the accelerator, building up a high-pitched hum that grew louder and louder.

  


Until finally …

  


“Kill it!” he yelled, the ionized atmosphere coating his tongue in the sharp taste of metal as blue-green light washed over him.

  


With a metal clang, she turned off the accelerator, ceasing the narrow but unbelievably intense blue-glowing stream of particles just as he released his power, ending the constant flow of emerald magic.

  


For a few heartbeats, the room continued to be bathed in the brilliant waves of blue-green light, but with a snap, that light condensed, rushing into the brilliant green-glowing sample of the brand new element, the first of its kind on this earth.

  


“See?” he panted, sweat-soaked black hair clinging to his scalp. “I told you it would work!”

  


“Did it?” she coughed, the brittle tang of the charged air stinging her throat.

  


“I guess there’s only one way to find out,” he answered, grabbing a tool to delicately lift the glowing, new-made element out of the housing unit and carrying it over to a waiting arc reactor.

  


With a gentle snap, the reactor closed around the triangular element, flickering with faint pulses of green light as it started to activate, until it finally stabilized, emitting a quiet hum as it bathed Harry in a steady emerald glow.

  


“It works!” he announced excitedly. “The new element has taken the place of palladium in the reactor, and now it can function without that pesky poisoning-its-user feature. And it should have a pretty massive upswing in power output, too.”

  


“And let me guess: you’re going to go cram that in Tony’s chest without even taking five minutes to run diagnostics on the thing, aren’t you?” she asked him flatly.

  


He beamed at her. “You know me so well,” he complimented, grabbing the new and improved reactor.

  


She groaned. “How are you not dead already?” she asked in exasperation.

  


“Unreasonable amounts of luck,” he answered. “Plus, I’ve got you to watch my back.”

  


This time, the smile he shot her was full of nothing but warm affection and deep-seated gratitude.

  


She rolled her eyes at him again, but couldn’t quite hold back the fond smile completely.

  


“Thanks for your help with this,” he told her, grabbing his stuff and giving her a quick kiss on the cheek. “I owe you!” he called out as he teleported to the hospital.

  


She gently touched her blushing cheek as she turned and stared out across the massive warehouse lab, almost every inch of which was filled with immense, hyper-advanced pieces of machinery developed and built over a period of years for the sole purpose of helping her, and nearly all of which had been almost single-handedly funded by him without a moment’s complaint or hesitation.

  


“I think we’re still far from even, Harry,” she muttered, a caring smile on her face.

  


* * *

  


**An institution providing medical and surgical treatment and nursing care for sick or injured people (otherwise known as a hospital)**

  


Stepping through the door into Tony’s room in the hospital, Harry was greeted with an almost physical wall of silence as everyone inside turned and stared at the still armored teen.

  


Pepper was standing by the window with the doctor, who, judging by the look on their faces, had likely just been explaining Tony’s condition, and how there wasn’t really anything conventional medicine could do for him at this point. Closer to the door, Natasha casually slid her hands out from behind her back, where, based on what he had learned about her true nature as a SHIELD agent, she likely had a weapon concealed.

  


And on the bed, hooked up to a weakly beeping heart monitor, lay Tony, likely looking much like Harry himself had only hours ago.

  


“Harry? Where have you been?” Pepper asked with all the fatigued softness of someone who was grieving, and lacked the strength for more potent emotion.

  


“Went for a burger,” he answered facetiously, stepping over to Tony’s bedside. “I mean, IV bags are great and all, but I needed something with a little more substance, you know?”

  


Before Pepper could reply, Natasha stepped closer, eyes on the glowing device in his hand. “Is that …?”

  


“Hmm? Oh, this?” He held up the new reactor. “Yeah, I figured the waking nightlight here could use a battery change.”

  


With that, he set the reactor on the bed and, without further ado, ejected the old reactor from Tony’s chest.

  


“Junk!” he declared, tossing the priceless reactor over his shoulder carelessly before grabbing the new reactor and hooking it into the socket in Tony’s chest. Finally, like the Fonz starting a jukebox, he popped the reactor the rest of the way in with a firm bop of his fist.

  


The reactor gave a high-pitched whine as it began to glow more brightly, bathing everyone there in a brilliant green light before finally leveling off, the reactor fully integrated into Tony’s body.

  


For several seconds, everyone waited with bated breath, staring silently at Tony’s unconscious form.

  


With a gasp, his eyes suddenly snapped open.

  


“ _IT’S ALIIIIIVE!_ ” Harry cried, cackling wildly.

  


Dead silence greeted his exclamation.

  


“You know, I work really hard on my mad scientist impersonation, and nobody appreciates it,” Harry grumbled to himself unhappily.

  


“What impersonation?” Tony asked groggily, but with a smirk firmly in place. “But before we get into that, I have a couple questions: first, who exactly has been feeding me coconut and nickels?” He smacked his lips with a grossed-out look on his face. “And second, who is responsible for this horrendous piece of junk in my chest?”

  


Harry thought he would swallow his own tongue. “Piece … of _junk_?!” he cried. “That thing is the most advanced reactor on the freaking _planet_! I had to invent a fucking _element_ to make that thing! And you’re calling it a _piece of junk_?!”

  


Natasha edged herself closer to the nearly apoplectic teen.

  


Tony simply continued staring at the new reactor. “It’s green.”

  


“So?!” Harry demanded.

  


“It’s ugly,” the blue-favoring Tony explained with a look of deepest disgust.

  


“It’s keeping you alive!” Harry choked out.

  


“But it’s ugly,” Tony insisted again.

  


“I will kill you!” Harry threatened, Natasha physically holding him back as he subconsciously tried to launch himself at Tony. “I will kill you _dead_!”

  


“Please do not murder my patient,” the frazzled-looking doctor requested. “And while you’re at it, could you please stop giving him experimental treatments? I’m fairly certain Mr. Stark didn’t call me all the way here just to stand by and do nothing.”

  


“Oh, believe me, I am freaking _done_!” the irate teen promised, glaring murderously at the man still staring unhappily at the reactor that several years of Harry’s life and a couple of near-death experiences had gone into developing.

  


“So, wait, this new reactor is going to keep Tony alive without killing him?” Pepper desperately tried to clarify.

  


“Yes,” Harry answered, still glaring at Tony. “I had to invent a new freaking element to make it, but the reactor can now function without the palladium that was poisoning the bastard.”

  


“Can I please get a piece of blue glass or something that I can tape over this? Because I just can’t respect myself at all with a neon green light sticking out of my chest.” Tony said to the room.

  


Harry charged up his repulsor with a whine.

  


“Oh, would you please stop it?” Pepper asked in exasperation, smacking Tony on the back of his head as he snickered at the look on Harry’s face.

  


“Please do not strike my patient,” the doctor politely ordered, recovering from her frazzledness remarkably well as she returned to her standard professionalism.

  


Tony smiled. “You know, Doctor Cho, I was already planning on paying you ridiculously well for taking care of me and Harry, but if you’d write me a doctor’s note for that whole ‘No hitting me’ thing so I could show it to Pepper whenever she starts going off on me unfairly, I’d be willing to throw an even heftier bonus your way.”

  


“Well, I do have a rather interesting project that could use funding …,” the Korean doctor mused with a faint smile.

  


“Ooh, I like interesting projects,” Tony remarked happily, sitting up and looking at her in interest.

  


Just then, however, the muted TV on the wall suddenly spat out a burst of static noise as some crappy daytime show was replaced with a blood-red screen featuring what was by now a well-loathed symbol.

  


“Okay, this guy has _seriously_ got to go,” Harry groaned, staring at the screen hatefully.

  


“Seconded and thirded,” Tony eloquently agreed, a dark shadow falling over his eyes.

  


Once again, the screen ran through a riot of images of violence and destruction. But this time, these images showcased the Mandarin’s attack on Hollywood, with screaming throngs of people fleeing from unrelenting metal juggernauts as the city around them crumbled under missile fire.

  


And front and center among all of these images, the destruction of the famed Hollywood sign played again and again, the entire mountain side erupting in a pillar of fire as the quietly planted explosives did their work to decimate a famed part of America’s history.

  


An event Harry and Tony had failed to stop.

  


Finally, however, the nerve-wracking cascade of images stilled, settling on the robed figure of the Mandarin.

  


This time, though, he looked … _disappointed_.

  


For several moments, he simply sat there, staring into the camera with his dark eyes, seeming less like a terrorist conducting a nationwide campaign of carnage and destruction, and more like a father considering how best to punish his unruly child.

  


“America,” he muttered, tapping a long-nailed finger on the wooden arm of his chair. “It would seem that I spoke too soon when I said that you knew who I am. In truth, you clearly have no idea.” His frown brought to mind a father reaching for a belt as his guilty child looked on in fear. “Allow me to educate you,” he both offered and threatened. “My name is the Mandarin. This you know. What you may not know is that my name carries with it a long and rich history. In ancient times, my name was a war mantle meaning ‘Adviser to the King’.” His eyes seemed to bore into those watching. “How does this relate to you? Well, this goes back to the question I posed to you last time. ‘Who are you?’” His disappointed frown came back in full force. “And since you still can’t seem to find an answer, once again, I will answer for you.” He leaned forward. “America … is a king.”

  


He gave a sagely nod. “Yes. As a nation, your precious America stands among the others in this world as a king, mighty and powerful. Its wealth and its strength are unparalleled … and yet its _people_ are nothing more than sheep.” His black eyes glittered with righteous fury. “You flock behind mascots that offer you protection, but deliver only ash and broken promises. You worship them as gods, when they stand as nothing more than men, broken and weak!” The Mandarin was all but snarling. “I gave your idols a chance to prove themselves, to show themselves worthy of your trust, and what did they do? _Nothing!_ ” The man’s nostrils flared in his anger. “Nothing but show you who they truly were: hollow figures full of nothing but tricks and lies, worth even less than the scraps that went into crafting their precious suits. And so one of your great cities lies in ruins, bringing you one step closer to fulfilling your destiny of rising above these shackles of illusions and lies that bind you, letting you stand truly as a king among nations at long last.” The Mandarin settled back in his ornate wooden throne. “But you are not quite there yet, are you? No. A part of you continues to hold out hope that your faith will be rewarded, and that your _glorious_ defenders will rise to the occasion and protect you.” His lips twisted in a vicious smile. “But don’t worry. I will free you of these delusions soon enough. That is my purpose, after all. In the end, I am not a terrorist, no matter what others may claim me to be. I am the Mandarin, adviser to kings. And today, that means I am your teacher.” His beastly black eyes stared at them hungrily. “And now, it’s time for another lesson.”

  


Once more, the screen burst into a chaotic avalanche of violent images, only to return to some mindless daytime program.

  


Silence reigned in the room as it did.

  


“He didn’t tell us where he was attacking this time,” Pepper pointed out quietly, her face pale.

  


“No. He didn’t,” Natasha agreed, her emotionless expression conveying immense focus as she stared at the screen.

  


However, no one else had the opportunity to speak before things went from bad to worse.

  


“ _Harry!_ ” Jo’s panicked voice suddenly sounded in Harry’s ear.

  


“Jo? What’s going on?” Harry asked in concern as everyone else looked at him in surprise. Tony stood as the only exception, holding his hand to his ear as Jarvis apparently contacted him as well.

  


“ _You have to get home, now!_ ” she yelled. “ _The Mandarin’s next target is the mansion! They’re here! They’re already attac–…!_ ”

  


With terrifying suddenness, her voice cut off abruptly.

  


“Jo?!” he asked in alarm, tapping the earbud. “ _Jo!_ ”

  


The sound of static was the only response.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo! New chapter! Now, for those that are wondering, the warehouse lab commandeered by Harry and [NAME REDACTED] is what in the movies would become the New Avengers Facility that the team would live in following the events of Age of Ultron. Ant-Man established that it was originally one of Howard Stark’s old storage facilities before this change.
> 
> As for vibranium being hidden there, Age of Ultron indicated that the vibranium sample used to make Cap’s shield was acquired when Howard Stark traded with Wakanda for what he thought was their sole supply of vibranium. This further suggests that he owned the sample himself, and not that the US government owned it and simply contracted Howard Stark to figure out what could be done with it. And given that Howard Stark was one of the premier scientists of his age, if he had managed to get his hands on what he thought was the world’s only supply of this extremely valuable and unique metal, then there is absolutely no way he would have taken the whole thing and turned it into a glorified trashcan lid. What he would have done was hold some of it back to study, while claiming to the world that he had used up all he had in crafting the legendary frisbee in order to protect himself from thieves, much like how Wakanda later claimed that Klaue had stolen all the vibranium they had after that vibranium was publicly revealed in Age of Ultron. So, while it may not be official MCU canon that Howard Stark kept a part of his vibranium supply to himself, I find it very realistic that he would have done so. In fact, I find it extremely unrealistic for him to have done otherwise.
> 
> Regarding vibranium’s mystical properties, that’s actually canon, according to the comics. Doomwar heavily featured this lesser known quality of vibranium, where it was also mentioned that one of vibranium’s more unique traits is that it coexists in both the material and spiritual planes (which, in this story, I’m interpreting to mean the astral plane, or astral dimension, as it’s referred to in Doctor Strange).
> 
> Beyond that, I hope you’re enjoying the story, and I’ll see you next time :)


End file.
